active buzzer/The board/01. The four pins
The board · 01 of 9

The four pins

Four pins, three of them wired: GND on the square pad, VCC for the buzzer, and SIGNAL into a transistor through 1 kΩ. NC is connected to nothing. HIGH on SIGNAL beeps and LOW stops it, which is what ACTIVE HIGH on the front and BEEPS WHEN GPIO IS HIGH on the back both say.

Three wires and a spare

The header is four right-angle pins, 2.54 mm apart, printed GND, VCC, NC and SIGNAL from left to right with the parts facing you. GND is on the square pad, and that pad is the only way to tell four identical holes apart. Count from it.

The four pins, and the buzzer
Show
Pins
4
Pins to wire
3
Pitch
2.54 mm
SIGNAL goes through 1 kΩ into a transistor's base, and nowhere else. HIGH sounds the buzzer; LOW stops it. Your pin gives about 2.6 mA at 3.3 V, never the buzzer's current. There is no resistor to GND, so while nothing drives SIGNAL, nothing holds it LOW either.

Pick a pin to see where it goes. GND is the transistor's emitter: the buzzer's current comes back through it. VCC is the buzzer's own supply, and it goes to 5V on every board in this book. SIGNAL is the input: a 1 kΩ resistor and a transistor, nothing else. NC is in no net at all.

What HIGH means

The front prints ACTIVE HIGH beside the header and the back prints BEEPS WHEN GPIO IS HIGH. Both say the same thing: drive SIGNAL HIGH and it sounds, drive it LOW and it stops. There is no pitch to set and no library to load.

The back of the TK36, header at the bottom: a black board with a gold border, lonely binary across the top, the buzzer's two solder joints, two round LEGO holes, a gold box printed TK36 ACTIVE BUZZER, four header pads with the square one on the right, and BEEPS WHEN GPIO IS HIGH along the bottom edge. No pin names are printed on this side.
The back. Turned over, the square pad is on the right, and it is still GND.

What neither says is what happens when nothing drives SIGNAL. The net list answers that: SIGNAL reaches R1 and nothing else, so there is no resistor holding it LOW. A floating SIGNAL is usually quiet, and a pin pulled HIGH while your board starts will sound the buzzer. Quiet at boot is about which pins do that.

Five volts on VCC

The buzzer is a 5 V part and VCC is its supply, so VCC goes to a 5V pin: the Uno's 5V, the 5V pin of an ESP32 or ESP32-S3 board on USB, or a Pico's VBUS. That is safe beside a 3.3 V board because VCC never reaches SIGNAL. 3V3 works too, a little quieter; five volts or three has the numbers.

When it does not work

Which end of the header is GND?

The square pad. From the front, parts up and pins pointing down, it is the left-hand pin, and the order is GND, VCC, NC, SIGNAL. The back prints no pin names; turned over, the square pad is on the right and it is still GND.

Should I connect NC to something?

No. It is soldered to a pad that no trace reaches, so it makes no difference either way. It is there so every TinkerBlock block has the same four-pin header and one cable fits all of them.

Is SIGNAL safe on a 3.3 V board when VCC is 5V?

Yes. SIGNAL reaches a 1 kΩ resistor and the transistor's base, and nothing on the board joins it to VCC. The base holds itself near 0.7 V; your pin only ever pushes a couple of milliamps into it.

Alongside this page
Where this goes next

The buzzer, the transistor that switches it, and the three small parts around them.

What is on it

Edit this page — content/books/active-buzzer/the-four-pins.mdx

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