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[on:]

This example makes use of a Piezo Speaker in order to play melodies. We are taking advantage of the processors capability to produde PWM signals in order to play music.

But I've noticed I can set the speakerPin to any digital pin, not just the ones with PWM
???

[Reply #1 on:]

Did you try on the hardware to see if it works? It shouldn't, at least not in a regular Arduino, which has PWM only on a few selected pins.

[Reply #2 on:]

The PWM is a built-in function of the ATMEGA-328 chip.  It is one of the modes that the timer can be set to run in.  This means that it is hard-wired to toggle one of the pwm pins, in the actual hardware of the chip.

The tone functions use the timer in a mode that when it overflows above a certain number, it triggers a function.  This is a software application, because it is inside this function that the pin (any pin, not just PWM pin) is toggled.  It is not a specific hardware feature of the chip.

I think this is correct, and that it answers your question.

[Reply #3 on:]

This example makes use of a Piezo Speaker in order to play melodies. We are taking advantage of the processors capability to produde (sic) PWM signals in order to play music.

That's a direct quote (including the misspelling of  "produce") from http://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/PlayMelody

The first example does not use PWM, it just wiggles a pin at the approximate frequency of a desired note.  Any old pin will do.  (In case you can't follow the code, the clue that it isn't Arduino-style PWM is that there are no analogWrite function calls.)

The second example attempts to use analogWrite as a (fixed) volume control.  That is if you use a smaller number in the analogWrite function call you should get a lower volume.  If you use a non-PWM pin for the second example, you will have two values of volume: Maximum volume and zero volume.

The way that it tries to do the volume control is that instead of wiggling the pin between a solid +5 Volts and 0 Volts, it turns on bursts of PWM at the wiggle rate.  The higher frequency components of the PWM are (presumably) filtered out by the speaker characteristics and/or by the human auditory response limits with the result that it is kind of like wiggling the output pin at the audio rate of the desired tone but with a lower effective amplitude.

Looking at the comments in the program, I wouldn't expect this to be a very practical program for actually playing tunes, but it can still be a learning experience. (Or, maybe, not.)  See Footnote.


Regards,

Dave

Footnote:
The analogWrite function takes an eight-bit argument.  If you try to feed it a value of 500 as is done in the example, it actually gets just the lower 8 bits (value of 244 decimal).  I'm not sure what beginners are supposed to get out of this kind of confusingly shaky example.  Anyhow, try it example number 2 with analogWrite values like 50, 100, 150, 200 (instead of 500) and see what it sounds like.