Connecting & Programming a Speaker

Step 1: collect your supplies

1. Your robot, with pin connectors
2. A small speaker
3. Two jump wires

Step 2: push the two jump wires onto the two leads of the speaker

Step 3: connect the wires to your robot

• One to a GND pin
• One to a signal pin (the code below uses pin 12)

Notes: information about the components

• The speaker we are using is a 'passive buzzer'. This means that it will only make a noise when given a signal to do so, but can play a range of tones. You could also connect a pair of headphones or some larger speakers, which would also work with the code below!
• The jump wires we are using are known as 'female' wires - these are slots, which connect with 'male' pointy wires, such as those on your robot.
• You can connect a speaker directly to a micro:bit, instead of using your robot, by using crocodile clips instead of jump wires. The robot is not required for the code below to work.

Step 1: playing a tune

Open your robot program (if you were at Robocamp, click here to find yours)

You are going to add new code near the top of your program, underneath import radio and above radio.config.

In this spot, add the following code:

import music
music.play(music.ODE, pin=pin12)

What other tunes can you get the micro:bit to play?

Step 2: creating your own tune

Instead of playing one of the built-in tunes, you can play individual notes and make your own tunes.

Replace your music.play line with this code:

music.play("C4:2", pin=pin12)

• The letter C is the musical note, C.
• The first number 4 is the octave.
• The second number, 2, after the colon, :, is the number of beats to play the note for.

You can use notes A-G, with a # after a note to make a sharp, and an R for a rest.

To make a tune, use this format:

my_tune = ["A2:2", "C3:4", "E4:2", "G5:4"]
music.play(my_tune, pin=pin12)

• Give your tune a name, such as my_tune
• Set it equal to a list - note the square brackets []
• Seperate each note with a comma, inside it's own speech marks

Step 3: using music in your robot code

So far, you have tested code so that it runs at the start of your program.

Think about when you want a your robot to play a tune...

• When you press a button on your joystick?
• When your robot is upside down?

To help your code behave as expected, you can tell the micro:bit not to wait until it has finished the tune before moving on to the next instruction:

music.play(my_tune, pin=pin12, wait=False)