Not really sure if this is the forum to post but I'm looking for some cool ideas
As of today I'm the proud owner of some old scrap (funtional) harddisks.
I've just taken HD's apart and use the parts up until now. But now I got sets of 10, 7 and 3 identical drives.
I just don't want to take out the platters and make them into say shaving mirrors again, I'd like to do a cool project involving some arduino intelligence.
What i Have:
10x
7x
3x
Some keywords of what I'v been thinking of:
HD floppotron
musical harddisks
playing wav on one HD and percussion on others
playing multiple tones on different drives with the tone library
My cousin built a clock using the motor from a HDD to drive an arm made of PCB material. The arm spun round. On the arm are 8 LEDs in a row plus some electronics to drive them. As the arm passes the top quarter or so of its rotation the LEDs light in a sequence that makes them look like they are showing the time.
There are a lot of ways to use the motors and/or their encoders for something (that seems to be the only useful part), but not so many that have application for multiple identical harddrives unless you're making a lot of something. There are a lot of examples on youtube as noted above.
One thing you'll notice about all those projects, though, is that they have a large mechanical component, generally much larger than the arduino portion - are you equipped (in terms of both tools and skill) for that aspect? Frankly a big part of why I almost never use motors in my project is the difficulty of creating motor mounts and physical hardware, lacking ready access to machine tools and the 3d modeling skill required to get stuff 3d-printed.
I would suggest asking yourself, in general, if you actually are interested in any of the sorts of things you could do with these harddrives, or just feel compelled to do something with the obsolete harddrives you have kicking around because you have them. In the latter case, consider whether it would actually be more fulfilling to throw them out and order some cheap parts that could make a cooler project with less work. There's a ton of cheap hobby electronic stuff available on ebay for insanely low prices - the projects I made got a lot more functional and satisfying when I stopped trying to build them with parts I had laying around or pulled out of junk, and started just buying more suitable parts.
@all: yes, the are tons of projects, involving part or only óne HD
@ pert: I build 4 rotary encoders in the past
@ DrAzzy: I do have the skills and tools to build (access to metal/wood/lasercutting/3D printing workshop)
@ DrAzzy & Paul__B and all others:
I really love the look and technology inside HD's, it's just awesome! I'd love to do something big, like 3-10 HD's working simultaniously. You might say keep dreaming, but yeah I will...
I think I'm going to look into making the HD's working simultaneously on a sound project.
How cool would it be to have an array of HD's playing a tune or playing wav files to tell/speak out the time
I'll start by focusing on, and exploring the voice coil assembly.
