Renault F1 engine playing God Save the Queen on HackerTube: recommended by 2 Hacker News commenters across 2 separate months, 2015–2024.
demo · evergreen
A short clip of a Renault F1 engine playing God Save the Queen by precisely controlling its RPM, recorded at Goodwood. It demonstrates how finely the drivetrain can be controlled.
Treated as a favorite hack and a go-to example in threads about machines playing music.
“if you haven't heard an F1 car play God Save The Queen [0] it's a great watch”
6 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.
I once walked the footbridge over the hillclimb at Goodwood during the Festival of Speed as a V10 F1 car went underneath. Was something else entirely. Seeing the musical demos the Renault team used to do was always interesting too - if you haven't heard an F1 car play God Save The Queen [0] it's a great watch (and a reminder about how controllable they are). [0] ▶ this video
in “Honda quits F1, invests in carbon-free tech instead” · View on HN
My favorite version of this hack is Renault changing the RPM of their F1 engine to play God Save The Queen: ▶ this video
in “Dot matrix printer playing “Eye of the Tiger” [video]” · View on HN
Yeah I am guessing it is from the motor RPM pitch but I would like to find out. The Renault F1 engine could famously play tunes this way. ▶ this video
in “Let your mower sing Happy Birthday for your loved ones” · View on HN
▶ this video Maybe this is what you're referring to. There are similar examples where people do this with old disk drives and printers too.
in “Tesla Normal Operating Sounds” · View on HN
> Next trick...turn a Tesla into a musical instrument via the motor drives. Renault did it some years ago to demonstrate how much control they have on their F1 engine drivetrain: ▶ this video
in “The Floppotron 3.0” · View on HN
The examples were a lot of fun to play with. Nice work. I was thinking earlier today of creating an F1 engine note simulator. I would want to play with the number of cylinders, v angle, crank offset (v8 normal crank/180 crank) and maybe some kind of exhaust system variables (tuned length, crossover pipe), and of course RPM. I don't know where to start, could you point me at the type of programming I would want to look at to figure out how to do this? Here is an f1 car engine playing God Save the Queen [1], sounds atrocious, but still cool. [1] ▶ this video
in “Tone.js – A framework for making interactive music in the browser” · View on HN