Pirates of the Caribbean tune in your Arduino buzzer

Prerequisites

Hardware

• 1* Arduino Board (I use Arduino Uno)
• 1* Arduino USB cable
• 1* BreadBoard
• 1* Passive Buzzer
• 2* Jumping wires

Software

• Arduino IDE

OR

• Visual Studio Code (with Arduino extension installed)

Arduino IDE has more beginner friendly layout for learning Arduino and C++ language. However, its good practice to work with Visual Studio Code as most of the world works with it.

Setup

Connect the circuit as shown in the diagram

Important

Make sure that the Jumping wire that connects Arduino GND is to the negative of the buzzer

After finishing setting it up it should look similar to the diagram below. Just note the diagram show cases the Arduino Uno

Make sure your setup is aligned with the arduino board you are using, otherwise you'll have problem compiling the program.

Solutions to possible problems with IDE <=> Arduino setup:

• IDE isn't configured with the correct Arduino Board
• IDE isn't configured with the correct Serial Port

Those 2 issues above shouldn't be an issue as the IDE finds the Arduino type and serial port for you automatically when you connect the USB cable to the computer.

• Does the .ino file that runs arduino is the same name as in arduino.json configuration file. If you have an issue with that you can either rename the folder of the project or restart the Arduino IDE(usually fixes itself).

Code

Modification You Can Do

• Go to include/Constant.h file contains BUZZER_IO constant variable this is the port of arduino I/O that is connected to the Buzzer(Passive). If you connect to a different pin/port make sure to change that BUZZER_IO value to align the pin/port you connected with the jumping wire
• include/Constant.h file contains enum of the musical notes distributed in frequencies(Hz). If you want to change the frequencies, change the value of the notes. The context values are Musical Notes to Frequencies
• There is a sound multiplier variable that can multiply the frequency of the musical note. You can access it by editing the CaribbeanTune object in arduino_caribbean_buzzer.ino by adding additional argument in the parenthesis.

This will look something like this:

CaribbeanTune* tuner;
int frequencyMultiplier = 2; // random number

void setup()
{
  tuner = new CaribbeanTune(BUZZER_IO, frequencyMultiplier);
  pinMode(BUZZER_IO, OUTPUT); // sets up the port pin for the arduino to connect to the buzzer
}

Arduino built-in Methods

Arduino library has a built-in method tone() that runs voltage in the frequency and duration that you pass in the arguments. Source for details about the method tone() is here

Note

The lowest frequency tone() method can play is 31Hz

The reason we use tone method is because thats the only built-in method in arduino that handles different frequencies compared to analogWrite() which is stuck in 500Hz frequency. source

The delay() method is required in the project because the tone() method runs on a different thread => which means that when you run tone() right after another they will be played simultaneously. In the class InstrumentBuzzer.h the method playNote() solves that issue, so needn't worry about it.

Anyways, thats all, Enjoy!