Use Active Buzzer with Raspberry PI and Python

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Last Updated on 24th March 2023 by peppe8o

Active buzzer is a cheap electronic component able to produce a sound when powered with a DC current.

Active Buzzer

Differently from passive buzzer, this element includes a built-in oscillator. This allow user to make it working by powering on and without the need to simulate an electronic square wave. It includes 2 rear pins. The longer one is positive and must be connected to power signal. The shorter one is ground and must be connected to 0V (ground).

Final result is a semplified programming script to use it.

In this guide I’ll show you how to use an activebuzzer with your Raspberry PI. I will use a Raspberry PI Zero W, but this guide will work also with newer Raspberry PI boards.

What We Need

As usual, I suggest adding from now to your favourite e-commerce shopping cart all the needed hardware, so that at the end you will be able to evaluate overall costs and decide if continue with the project or remove them from the shopping cart. So, hardware will be only:

Raspberry PI Zero WH board

Rearding active buzzer, you can also evaluate the cheap Elegoo starter kit, which includes a number of sensors useful for your electronics projects.

Check hardware prices with following links:

Amazon raspberry pi boards box
Amazon raspberry pi Zero W box
Amazon Raspberry PI Power Supply box
Amazon Micro SD box
Amazon Dupont Wiring box
Amazon active buzzer box

Wiring Diagram

Following picture shows wiring diagram adopted:

Raspberry pi Active Buzzer wiring

Following picture shows overall project:

Raspberry pi Active Buzzer picture

Step-by-Step Procedure

An headless installation will be performed. However, also a Desktop installation works, using terminal.

Environment Preparation

This procedure starts from operating system setup installing Raspberry PI OS Lite.

Align your Raspberry PI to the latest updates. From terminal:

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade

RPI.GPIO should be already installed (otherwise, you can get it installed with the command “sudo apt install python3-rpi.gpio”).

Prepare Python Script

Python script becomes really simple with GPIO. You can download it in your Raspberry PI from terminal:

wget https://peppe8o.com/download/python/active_buzzer.py

Below the script description.

Before all, needed libraries are imported:

import sys
import RPi.GPIO as GPIO
import time

Signal PIN (pin where the positive cable is connected) is defined in a variable for better management. Be aware to use GPIO BCM naming. In my cabling, it is number 14. It is also set to be an output pin:

signalPIN = 14
GPIO.setmode(GPIO.BCM)
GPIO.setup(signalPIN,GPIO.OUT)

At this point, our buzzer is ready to work. Our script will set its power output on and wait 5 seconds: this means that buzzer will produce its sound for 5 seconds. Then GPIO PINs are cleaned and script exits:

GPIO.output(signalPIN,1)
time.sleep(5)

GPIO.cleanup()
sys.exit()

Enjoy!

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