Renault F1 engine playing God Save the Queen
Chris Billett2 HN recommenders · recommended in 2 months, 2015–2024
demo · general · evergreen · 2015–2024 on HN
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.
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6 comments from Hacker News
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
My favorite version of this hack is Renault changing the RPM of their F1 engine to play God Save The Queen: ▶ this video
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
▶ 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.
> 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
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