Music Player With Buzzer Using Swift Language

In this project, let's play a known song Twinkle twinkle little star using a buzzer.

Step 1: What You Will Need

The parts you will use are all included in this Maker kit.

• SwiftIO board
• Shield
• Buzzer
• 4-pin cable

Step 2: About Musical Notes

Before coming to the code, you will need to know something about the notes.

There are 88 keys in total on a piano keyboard, from A0 to C8. These notes correspond to different frequencies.

A half step, or semitone, is the smallest interval between notes, for example, the interval between the key A and key A# is a half step. Two half steps constitute a whole step, like the interval between A and B.

An octave consists of 12 half steps. It is the distance between a note and the next note with the same name, for example, the first key A to the second key A forms an octave.

A quarter note is the common note length in music and has one beat. Then the other notes are based on it: a half note has two beats, a whole note has four beats, an eighth note has half of the beat, etc.

BPM, or beat per minute, is used to measure the tempo of a piece of music. For example, 60 BPM means there would be 60 beats in a minute and each beat lasts 1 second.

Step 3: The Circuit

Place the shield on the top of your SwiftIO board.

Connect buzzer module to pin PWM2B (D10).

Step 4: The Code

The file Twinkle.swift:

import PWMTone

struct Music {
    static let twinkle: [(note: PWMTone.Note, value: Int)] = [
        (.C4, 4),
        (.C4, 4),
        (.G4, 4),
        (.G4, 4),

        (.A4, 4),
        (.A4, 4),
        (.G4, 2),

        (.F4, 4),
        (.F4, 4),
        (.E4, 4),
        (.E4, 4),


        (.D4, 4),
        (.D4, 4),
        (.C4, 2),

        (.G4, 4),
        (.G4, 4),
        (.F4, 4),
        (.F4, 4),

        (.E4, 4),
        (.E4, 4),
        (.D4, 2),

        (.G4, 4),
        (.G4, 4),
        (.F4, 4),
        (.F4, 4),

        (.E4, 4),
        (.E4, 4),
        (.D4, 2),

        (.C4, 4),
        (.C4, 4),
        (.G4, 4),
        (.G4, 4),

        (.A4, 4),
        (.A4, 4),
        (.G4, 2),

        (.F4, 4),
        (.F4, 4),
        (.E4, 4),
        (.E4, 4),

        (.D4, 4),
        (.D4, 4),
        (.C4, 2)
    ]
}

The file main.swift:

/* Import the SwiftIO library to use everything in it. */
import SwiftIO

/* Import the board library to use the Id of the specific board. */
import SwiftIOBoard

/* Import this library to set the PWM signal according to the musical notes. */
import PWMTone

var halfStep = 0
/* BPM, beat per minute, measures the tempo of music. */
var bpm = 60
/* Initialize a player. */
let player = PWMTone(PWMOut(Id.PWM2B), bpm: bpm)

while true {
    /* Play the music. */
    player.play(track: Music.twinkle)

    /* Increase the bpm to make the music faster. */
    bpm += 40
    player.setBPM(bpm)

    /* Raise an octave and the pitch sound higher. */
    halfStep += 12
    player.setFixedHalfStep(halfStep)

    sleep(ms: 1000)
}

Step 5: Code Analysis

You could find two files in the project.

The file Twinkle.swift records the notes of the melody and the duration of each note.

In the file main.swift, you will set the PWM signal to play the music. Let's take a look at it.

import SwiftIO
import SwiftIOBoard
import PWMTone

SwiftIO and SwiftIOBoard are the libraries used in all these projects.

And you will use another library PWMTone. It allows you to set the PWM in accordance with the musical score.

var halfStep = 0

The value halfStep is used to change the pitch. It equals 0, so the pitch remains unchanged.

var bpm = 60

Set the bpm to 60, so each beat will last one second.

let player = PWMTone(PWMOut(Id.PWM2B), bpm: bpm)

Initialize the player. It has three parameters:

• The first one is the PWM pin,
• The second is the bpm.
• The third one sets the interval between each note, it equals 0.1 by default.

player.play(track: Music.twinkle)

This statement is to play the music. The method play(track:halfstep) has two parameters.

• The track is an array of tuples that indicates notes and note length. Music.twinkle refers to the score written in the file Twinkle.swift. In the struct Music, there is a constant twinkle that stores the notes and the note length. So the track is written as Music.twinkle.
• The halfStep has a default value of 0. You will set it later. So you could ignore it here.

bpm += 40 
player.setBPM(bpm)

Then increase the bpm to make the tempo a little faster. This increment is a random number you prefer.

halfStep += 12
player.setFixedHalfStep(halfStep)

These two statements aim to raise an octave, so the pitch of the music sounds higher.

Step 6: Run the Project

After you successfully download the code, you will hear the melody from the buzzer. The music will gradually become faster and the pitch will become higher.