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Choosing a Speaker

Xenobius

May 15, 2012
125
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May 15, 2012
Messages
125
Hi all,

I want to connect a very loud speaker with my arduino. The only thing that I intend to output is a Siren kind of sound as a warning only, hence no need to output music and stuff.

I was also looking for a typical PCB circular kind of speaker but then I found there are 4Ohms, 8Ohms ... and all these things which made me confused. Also there are many frwquency ranges... for example I know a human can hear from 20hz to 20Khz ... but I coulnd't find one...

My question is this.

1. How do you safely connect it to your arduino? (a typical micro controller)
2. What values should I be looking at to buy the speaker?

Thanks for your time :)
X:eek:
 

GreenGiant

Feb 9, 2012
842
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Feb 9, 2012
Messages
842
You can get pretty much any Piezo speaker and that will output a decently loud siren just hooked up between an I/O pin and ground.

Arduino has the "tone" function setup for these things

you dont really have to worry about the impedance of something like that unless you were playing music and such through it and were trying to get the most amplitude and best quality out, but for a straight tone siren you dont need to worry it will sound about the same either way
 

GreenGiant

Feb 9, 2012
842
Joined
Feb 9, 2012
Messages
842
no problem

You would not be able to find a speaker that would balance with the arduino anyways, they have a 10K pull-up/pull-down resistor on the I/O pins so you would need a 10K speaker... a.k.a. non-existent

good luck, let me know if you need any other help
 

Xenobius

May 15, 2012
125
Joined
May 15, 2012
Messages
125
:confused:

Am I going to be able to make it work or not? Would you be so kind as to draw me a circuit how you would control a speaker from am uC ?

Thanks :eek:
 

GreenGiant

Feb 9, 2012
842
Joined
Feb 9, 2012
Messages
842
using a piezo speaker (like you would find connected to a computer motherboard or in a small toy) connect the positive side to one of the I/O pins on the arduino lets say pin 16 then the negative to ground then program the arduino with the tone function

void setup()
{pinMode(16,OUTPUT);}
void loop()
{tone(13,2500);}

this will give you nothing but a solid tone of 2500Hz on the piezo

now creating a siren effect will take more programming but you get the idea
 

GreenGiant

Feb 9, 2012
842
Joined
Feb 9, 2012
Messages
842
I would go with this one

Best frequency range/dB/power rating

not the cheapest one out there, but the chances of you blowing it, or hurting the arduino with it is like next to nothing
 

Xenobius

May 15, 2012
125
Joined
May 15, 2012
Messages
125
Hey thanks a lot for taking the time to choose one for me! I am very great full :D
Looking forward to experiment with sound too.

Cheers
 
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