I just came across this hard drive/spring speaker on the Make: blog. What it apparently does is use a hard drive controller to wiggle a spring to make sounds. It’s deceptively simple, but incredibly useful.
In places like stadiums and airports, loudspeaker systems don’t really work well. Depending on your location they can be either inaudible or too loud to tolerate. By distributing the sound generation across a distance, you can make something loud enough to be heard anywhere without it being too loud at any one place. If you could adjust the echo that results from the sounds traveling through a spring, which shouldn’t be difficult, you could create a system that would be much more pleasant for people to interact with.
Of course, this all depends on how well it scales.
Posted by: Paul in Update
