Book Image

DIY Microcontroller Projects for Hobbyists

By : Miguel Angel Garcia-Ruiz, Pedro Cesar Santana Mancilla
Book Image

DIY Microcontroller Projects for Hobbyists

By: Miguel Angel Garcia-Ruiz, Pedro Cesar Santana Mancilla

Overview of this book

We live in a world surrounded by electronic devices, and microcontrollers are the brains of these devices. Microcontroller programming is an essential skill in the era of the Internet of Things (IoT), and this book helps you to get up to speed with it by working through projects for designing and developing embedded apps with microcontroller boards. DIY Microcontroller Projects for Hobbyists are filled with microcontroller programming C and C++ language constructs. You'll discover how to use the Blue Pill (containing a type of STM32 microcontroller) and Curiosity Nano (containing a type of PIC microcontroller) boards for executing your projects as PIC is a beginner-level board and STM-32 is an ARM Cortex-based board. Later, you'll explore the fundamentals of digital electronics and microcontroller board programming. The book uses examples such as measuring humidity and temperature in an environment to help you gain hands-on project experience. You'll build on your knowledge as you create IoT projects by applying more complex sensors. Finally, you'll find out how to plan for a microcontroller-based project and troubleshoot it. By the end of this book, you'll have developed a firm foundation in electronics and practical PIC and STM32 microcontroller programming and interfacing, adding valuable skills to your professional portfolio.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)

Programming a piezoelectric buzzer

In this section, you will learn what a buzzer is, how to interface it with the STM32 Blue Pill, and how to write a program to build an alert sound.

A piezoelectric buzzer is a device that generates tones and beeps. It uses a piezoelectric effect, which consists of piezoelectric materials converting mechanical stress into electricity and electricity into mechanical vibrations. Piezoelectric buzzers contain a crystal with these characteristics, which changes shape when voltage is applied to it.

As has been common in these chapters, you can find a generic breakout module that is pretty straightforward to use, as shown in the following screenshot:

Figure 13.2 – Piezoelectric buzzer breakout board

Figure 13.2 – Piezoelectric buzzer breakout board

This breakout board connects to the STM32 Blue Pill microcontroller board with three pins, outlined as follows:

  • Input/Output (I/O): This pin must be connected to a digital output of the microcontroller.
  • ...