Piezo buzzers can be found everywhere, next time you throw out an old smoke detector be sure to remove the piezoelectric element from it and stash it in your parts bin. If you want to monitor sound with a piezoelectric element it’s not that easy since the voltage produced by the device is so small. Nerd Kits has not only provided a circuit to help out they also walk through the circuit and explain it step by step.
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Reminds me of a science fair project I was working on long ago (20 years) regarding voltage output from crystals. It had a speaker at one end of a tube and a PE element at the other. A sound played at one end was picked up at the other. Another part of the project was more interactive in which the observer could press the element and see a VOM needle move depending on how hard they pressed.
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this is totally informative. being an artist, i didn’t get the math bit, but I have an awesome practical application for this.
do you think using a 3905 transistor would work this? I have to make a drum set into a number of switches to play a nintendo game and I want to use piezo discs as sensors. I think the output for nintendo controllers is 1v.
I hope this schematic works.
thanks,
mk