Is this piezo transducer broken, or even Arduino?

Forum 2005-2010 (read only) Hardware Interfacing
1

Hello.

I'm using an Arduino Dueminalove. I pretty much followed this guide,

I have a 10 M resistor and exactly the same sort of piezo as used in that guide.
However, what happens when I start the Arduino is that the value of the piezo is 250 and climbing down every 100 ms, down to 30. Nothing happens when I clap my hands, or anything. I tried with a 1M resistor as well, no luck.

What do you think is going on here?

Edit: Stupid of me, wrong input, might actually work. :confused:
Edit2: Well, it's working, not very good though, it's not responding when clapping, only when physically pushing on it.

2

this sensor is quite sensitive. If it got damaged in any way it will effect the sensor.

So check if its bent in any kind of way.

Second do the blink sketch to see if your arduino is working properly.

Good luck!

3

Well the Arduino probably is working, I can blink and so on. 100% sure it's the piezo that is weird and not very sensitive. It stays at 0 (I output Serial every 100 ms), until I press it with my finger, and then it raises to 1023 when pushing harder.
It doesn't change at all when clapping.

4

As I said, the piezo only registers when I'm physically pushing on it. Not when doing loud sounds. How am I supposed to fix this? There wasn't a noticeable difference between 1M resistor and 10M.

5

i would say, get a new one. If you are shure about this thing, just drop it.
Get a new one and use the same code. Just to check if it is really the hardware.

I just bought one and the guy in the store told me that there are some sort of crystals in the sensor and if there was to much force on it, it could break easy.

Or use it as a one button keyboard in the future :wink: