Part

Buzzer

Sounds when it is driven, and shows it on screen.

or see every part
  • 2 pins
Drawn live by the editor's own code, at the size you see it.
Reference

Every one of its 2 pins

Pin
What it does
1
The longer leg, positive.
2
The shorter leg, negative.
This part

What it does

Mokxi models the ordinary small piezo buzzer that most kits ship, the active kind with its own oscillator built in, rather than a bare speaker element. Electrically it behaves like a polarized resistor: it conducts, and sounds, only while its longer leg sits above its shorter one, and it goes high-impedance the moment it is reverse biased or left with either leg floating. There is no audio waveform in the model, only a sounding-or-not state and the current it draws while it does, which is enough to show the one mistake almost everyone makes with this part: put the usual 220 ohm "LED resistor" in series with it and the divider that results leaves too little voltage across the buzzer to sound at all, so it goes silent rather than merely quieter. People wiring a buzzer for the first time often assume it has failed; here the same current probe that explains an LED’s brightness explains why the buzzer has gone quiet instead.

How it is modeled

What is true about the Buzzer, here

What is modeled

The buzzer really loads the net it is on, the same way the LED does, and that matters for a common mistake: driven straight off a 5 V rail it takes about 31 mA and sounds, but with the usual "LED resistor" of 220 ohms in series, the divider it forms leaves only around 2 V across it (below the threshold it needs), so it goes silent rather than merely fainter.

Not modeled

No audio waveform and no volume. The probe reports sounding or not sounding, nothing in between, and no reverse current or capacitance either.

The two numbers behind that are both round rather than measured from one part. The element is a plain 160 ohm resistor while it conducts, which is the round number next to the 167 ohms a 12 mm 5 V buzzer's rated 30 mA at 5 V works out at, so it draws 31 mA on a stiff rail. It is called sounding at 2.5 V across it and silent below, which is half the rated supply and stands in for the 3 V to 8 V operating range those datasheets quote. A real buzzer fades out over a volt or so rather than stopping at a line. There is no frequency at all: a real active buzzer's note is somewhere near 2.3 kHz and this part has none.

From Buzzer (active), in full.

Projects

See the Buzzer in a project

Shown here on: Arduino Uno R3

Wire up the Buzzer

Open the editor and push it into the breadboard. It is free, and it runs on your own machine.