Floppy Disks Just Became the Ultimate Kid-Proof TV Remote

Photo credit: Mads Olesen
Mads Chr. Olesen handed his three-year-old son a stack of vintage 3.5-inch floppies, each with a label depicting a favorite cartoon character or music mix. His little man grabbed one and stuffed it into the wooden box on the coffee table, eliciting the familiar click-whirr of the drive spinning up. Thirty seconds later, the precise episode he wanted is playing on the living room television. He pulls the disk out mid-show, and the video comes to a halt, with no menus, scrolling, or being taken down some weird video rabbit hole.

FloppyDiskCast transforms outdated floppy disks into the world’s most user-friendly TV remote for young children. It’s a rather straightforward design: the brains are housed in a tidy laser-cut MDF box that looks like it belongs next to wooden toys. A actual vintage floppy drive is pushed out front, modded with a little switch that detects when a disk is inserted.

The remote is powered by two 18650 batteries, which are boosted up to a steady 5 volts with an XL6009 thingy, and then there’s a nice huge capacitor to smooth out the big spike of power when the motor first turns on. It employs an Arduino to conduct the nitty gritty floppy work, followed by an ESP8266 module for WiFi tasks, giving simple orders to a network server that communicates directly with a Chromecast hooked into the television.

On track zero of each disk, there is only one small text file called autoexec.sh. That one-line file contains the name of the show, episode, or playlist that the parent wishes to link to the disk. When the drive reads it, it sends a “diskin” command containing the name over the network, which the server converts into a direct play order for the Chromecast. Pull the disk, and the server receives the instruction “diskout,” and the show just pauses. Some disks are left blank, with the exception of a switch that allows the current show to pause and resume without the need to swap disks.

Parents can prepare the disks using any standard laptop equipped with a USB floppy drive. Format them as plain FAT, add the script, and label them, and they’re ready to go. The entire library fits in a tiny box. The blue one has Peppa Pig, the yellow one has tractor videos, and the black one has nighttime music, which the child refers to as “dad’s music.”

The most difficult challenge was dealing with power management. As soon as the floppy drives kick on, they become power-hungry monsters, capable of instantly turning a microcontroller into a brownout victim. Fortunately, Mads was able to get past this by tricking the drive’s ground into believing it was floating and setting all of the Arduino’s extra pins to high impedance mode. And, just to be safe, a 1000 microFarad capacitor was installed across the supply line to absorb any stray spikes, resulting in batteries that can easily last weeks even when the owner is a hyperactive toddler who uses it on a regular basis.

Inserting or removing a disk from the system wakes it up in less than a second; removing it puts it back into deep slumber. The server on the other end also keeps track of what was playing, so if you insert the same disk again, it will simply resume where it left off or, if the script specifies, move on to the next episode in line. However, if the child simply wants to hear “more songs like this,” random selection has that covered.
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