Pico explorer piezo speaker

Hi everyone,

I’m a new user of a pico explorer board. I bought it to experiment mixing its features together with an rfm95 lora module as a ttn node. I have a couple of garden modules plugged in and separately most devices are now working. Time to start knitting it all together.

I’d like to have an alert sound when a message is received and for this to use the onboard piezo sounder, however the volume is very low and unsuitable for this purpose - in fact I cannot hear it above even a modest amount of background noise as it is so faint.

With nothing else connected to my board and running the test application I get the same disappointing results. Have others found this problem, or perhaps my device is somehow faulty? I even tried adjusting the frequency to try and find a sweet spot but it didn’t help much.

Using the output from GP0 or A0 gives similar results. I find I can get a bit more sound by running an alternative sounder directly from a pico pin. I suspect there is insufficient voltage swing to properly drive the on-board piezo sounder.

Maybe have to investigate an alternative solution.
Kind regards, David.

My Pico Explorer is from the first batch and I agree it is pretty quiet.

Thanks Tony.
Support have offered to replace my board, I’m not sure if its faulty or just normally quiet.
I’ve since discovered that my wife can hear it better than I can. I hear most other alarms without problem, afik!.
Kind regards, David.