Physical Computing Classes

"Piezo" refers to "piezo electricity", the property that some materials have that allows them to accumulate electrical charge when put under mechanical stress.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piezoelectricity

We know about and use piezos because they are great little sound makers. Just like microphones and speakers, and motors and generators, piezos are actuators that convert electricity into mechanical movement and visa versa.

Piezos work well with our Arduino to create beeping and booping sounds. When you pulse electricity into the piezo at just the right frequency, you get musical notes.

Here are a couple of tutorials from Adafruit and from Arduino. The Adafruit one has an error in the code (look at the "for" loop). My modified code examples are linked here: http://jasonkrugman.com/classes/physcomp/piezo_code_krugman.zip

Tutorials:

Arduino Tutorial - Tone - http://arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/Tone
Adafruit Tutorial - Light Sensor Piezo setup - http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2009/05/19/piezo-with-an-arduino-photoresistor/ Arduino Tutorial - Plays Mary Had a Little Lamb - http://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/melody