passive buzzer/The board/01. The four pins
The board · 01 of 10

The four pins

Four pins, three of them wired. GND is the square pad, VCC goes straight to the buzzer, SIGNAL reaches a transistor through 1 kΩ, and NC is connected to nothing. The buzzer only sounds while SIGNAL is a square wave; held HIGH it is silent.

The header

A buzzer, the parts that switch it, and a four-pin header along the bottom edge. The header is right-angled, so the pins point out past the edge of the board and it lies flat in a breadboard or on a cable.

The TK37 seen from the parts side: a black board with a wide gold border, a square dark grey buzzer with cut corners near the top with a small round port and a plus sign on it, a black diode at the top right, a small LED and a resistor under the buzzer, a three-legged transistor and a resistor at the lower right, two big round mounting holes, lonely binary and PASSIVE BUZZER up the left edge, a box printed PWM, and a right-angle header labelled GND, VCC, NC and SIGNAL from left to right.
The parts side. GND is the left-hand pin, on the square pad.

Read the four pins left to right with the parts facing you: GND, VCC, NC, SIGNAL. Three of them are wired.

The four pins
Show
Pins
4
Pins to wire
3
Square pad
GND
SIGNAL goes through 1 kΩ to a transistor's base. The square wave you put here is the sound: its frequency is the pitch. Held HIGH it is silent and leaves about 200 mA flowing in the coil, so a sketch never leaves it HIGH.

GND and SIGNAL are the pair that matter to your sketch. SIGNAL is measured against GND, and the buzzer's current comes back through GND, so it has to be your board's own ground.

VCC is the buzzer's supply, straight to its + pad with no regulator in between. It never touches SIGNAL, which is why it can be 5V even beside a 3.3 V board. The choice between 3V3 and 5V is loudness against the buzzer's listed range; the first beep makes it.

What SIGNAL wants

Not a level: a wave. The front of the board prints PWM beside the header, and the back prints USE PWM SIGNAL TO MAKE SOUND. A square wave on SIGNAL is the sound, and its frequency is the pitch.

Held HIGH, this buzzer makes one click and goes silent, while the coil inside goes on drawing current. That is the difference between a passive buzzer and an active one, and it has its own article.

The back

The TK37 seen from the back: a black board with a gold border, lonely binary across the top, a line drawing of a round buzzer with two legs, two big mounting holes, a box printed TK37 beside PASSIVE BUZZER, four header pads with the square one on the right, and USE PWM SIGNAL TO MAKE SOUND along the bottom edge.
The back names the block and says what it needs, but not the pins. The square pad, now on the right, is still GND.

The drawing on the back is a generic round buzzer; the part fitted is the square one on the front.

When it does not work

Which pin is GND?

Hold the board with the parts facing you and the header pins pointing down. Read GND, VCC, NC, SIGNAL from left to right. GND is also the square pad, the one mark that survives when the board is in a breadboard and the labels are hidden. Turned over, the square pad is on the right.

Do I have to connect NC?

No. It is not connected to anything on the board. It is there so every TinkerBlock block has the same four-pin header. Wiring it does no harm and changes nothing.

Should VCC go to 3V3 or 5V?

Either is safe on any board, because VCC never reaches SIGNAL. 3V3 keeps the buzzer inside the 2.5 to 4.5 V its datasheet lists; 5V is a few decibels louder and is the voltage the maker tests it at. This book wires 3V3 on the ESP32-S3.

The back has no pin names.

The back prints TK37 PASSIVE BUZZER and USE PWM SIGNAL TO MAKE SOUND, and nothing over the holes. Count from the square pad, which is GND on both faces.

Where this goes next

The buzzer and the four small parts that drive it, one job each.

What is on it

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

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