Rick Flash SSD Project Uses an ESP8266 to Never Give You Up, Let You Down, Run Around, or Desert You

The Rick Roll — sending viewers to a copy of Rick Astley's classic "Never Gonna Give You Up" music video — is a well-established prank in the software world, but somewhat rarer in hardware, until Rectified Tech's Rick Flash came along.

"I was originally trying to design an adapter for a proprietary SSD," Rectified Tech's Jordan explains of the unusual project's origins, "but somehow I got distracted and ended up making an SSD that Rick Rolls you instead."

"It's an SSD that Rick Rolls you via a piezo buzzer, playing the chip tune version of the song 'Never Gonna Give You Up' when you turn on your computer — and it also displays a GIF of Rick Astley in a captive portal when you connect to the 'Free WiFi!'"

Designed to connect to a computer's M.2 slot and mimic the outward appearance of a Samsung SSD, the Rick Flash board is driven by an Espressif ESP8266 microcontroller — specifically, the ESP-12E module — along with nine Padauk PMS152 eight-bit SuLED IO controllers, some passive components, and the piezoelectric buzzer which emits the audio.

Once installed, the song plays on power-up and can be manually triggered via the same web interface which trolls those looking for free Wi-Fi connectivity — an idea first brought to life four years ago by Jaime Johnston. The Rick Flash is device-agnostic and compatible with both B and M key M.2 slots — though the Wi-Fi access point has a known issue with selected Samsung-brand smartphones, ironically enough given the mock branding of the "SSD" itself.

The board can be reprogrammed, too, thanks to the presence of programming pads on the back of the board. Instructions are provided for programming using a Wemos D1 Mini as the programmer with the Arduino IDE.

More details are available on the project's GitHub repository, where schematics and source code are made available under the permissive MIT License.