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STAMP Buzzer
This simple circuit will buzz a speaker and generate varying tones. It
illustrates the use of the RCTIME and FREQOUT commands, and also shows
how much can be achieved using a little PBASIC code.
Features
- Simple example of using the RCTIME command
- Shows how to make tones using FREQOUT
- As simple as it gets :-)
PBASIC Code listing
The following code will work on a Basic Stamp 2. The RC network is
placed across pin 8, and the speaker is connected to pin 7. The
results of charging the RC network is multiplied by 3 to give a
frequency value that results in an audible tone. I played around with
this a bit and you can try different values here.
This program is
pretty boring, until you connect a potentiometer across the charging
pin. Then you can twiddle the pot, and here the tone from the speaker
change in pitch.
Click here to download the PBASIC source
code.
'
' buzzer.bs2
' Simple program to buzz a speaker based on the charge across
' a pot-capacitor pair.
' Basic Stamp 2 code only.
' Copyright Mark Crosbie (mark@mastincrosbie.com), 1998.
'
' A variable to hold the result of the timing
result var word
' Symbolic constants for pins used in the circuit
RC con 8 ' pin to drive RC network
SPEAKER con 7 ' pin to drive speaker
loop:
dir7 = 1 ' set pin 7 to output
dir8 = 1 ' set pin 8 to output
high RC ' charge the capacitor
pause 10 ' wait for it to charge
rctime RC,1,result ' do the RC timing
freqout SPEAKER,10,result * 3 ' output a frequency on pin 7
goto loop
In the following walk through the code, I'll put commands in
boldface and variable names in italics.
Declaring variables
Let's take this apart line by line. First, we declare a variable named
result, which is of type word. This variable is going to
hold the result of timing the RC network. By declaring it a word, the
variable can hold a 16 bit value: 0 through 65535. If you try
different values for the capacitor and resistors, you'll notice the
value of result changing dramtically in size. To accomodate
all the range of values that result can take on, I declare it
as a word.
To make the program easier to read, I declare two constant values:
RC and SPEAKER. These values correspond to the pins that
the RC network and the speaker are connected to, respectively. Why do
this? Well I'm always rebuilding my circuits and moving them around on
a breadboard, and often I'll connect components to new pins when I
move things. Instead of having to search through the entire program
for every occurance of a command that uses that pin, I simply change
the symbolic constant declared at the top of the code that corresponds
to that pin. Much easier, and less error prone! It may seem like
overkill now, but wait until we get to more complex pieces of code,
and it will make life much easier!
Setting pin output
Next, we declare that pin 7 is an output by using the dir7
command. By setting this to the value 1 we simply tell the Stamp to
only allow output on pin 7. Pin 7 is used to drive the speaker. We
also declare pin 8 to be an output, as it is used to drive the
charging of the RC network.
Charging the capacitor - RCTIME
The RCTIME instruction is used to measure the discharge time of
the resistor-capacitor pair. The command takes three arguments:
- A pin to which the resistor-capacitor pair are connected.
- A state variable that indicates the desired final state of
the pin. When the pin reaches this state, RCTIME will
return.
- A result variable to hold the value returned by RCTIME in
the range 0 to 65535.
RCTIME works as follows: a counter is started which increments
every 2 microseconds (that's 500,000 ticks a second!) For as long as
the input pin is not in the state specified in state variable,
the counter is incremented. Once the pin has reached that state, the
value of the counter is stored in result variable. While the
capacitor charges through the output pin from the Stamp, the counter
in RCTIME is incrementing. Once the capacitor has charged, the
RCTIME command returns, with the value of the counter in the
variable result.
The length of time it takes a capacitor-resistor pair to charge or
discharge is proportional to R x C - the resistance times the
capacitance. The larger either of these values are, the larger the
charge time. For any given values of R and C, the RCTIME
command will return a value. If we increase the value of R, the value
returned by RCTIME will increase. If we decrease the value of
C, the valuse returned by RCTIME will decrease. Thus, by
altering the resistance R (using the potentiometer in this circuit),
we can change the value returned by the RCTIME command. Nifty,
eh!
Now we must discharge the capacitor through the resistor-potentiometer
pair. We set the output on pin 8 high. This will charge both of the
plates of the capacitor to 5 volts - effectively there is no charge on
the capacitor, as both of its plates are at the same potential.
We then pause for 10 milliseconds to allow the capacitor to discharge.
Generating a tone - FREQOUT
Once we have obtained the charge time, we can use the FREQOUT
command to generate a sinewave output on the speaker pin. This will
cause the speaker to generate an audible tone. The first argument to
FREQOUT is the pin to drive, in this case the symbolic constant
SPEAKER, which is our speaker pin. The second parameter is the
duration of the output, which is simply 10 milliseconds. Finally, the
value in result is used to specify the frequency of the tone in
hertz.
This body of code is wrapped in an infinite loop that will continually
generate a tone on the speaker, the frequency of which is controlled
by the setting on the potentiometer.
Wiring Guide
It's important to place the 22 ohm resistor in series with the 8 ohm
speaker, otherwise the current through the speaker may dammage the
Stamp output. If you have a speaker with a higher ohm rating, you can
leave the 22 ohm resistor out of the circuit.
Components Listing
All resistors are 1/4 Watt. Play around with different values for the
capacitor and resistor to see what effect it has on the output
frequency.
- 1x Basic Stamp II
- 1x 22 ohm resistor
- 1x 220 ohm resistor
- 1x 10k pot
- 1x 0.1uF capacitor
- 1x speaker, 8 ohm impedance
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