Arduino Birthday Project

This DIY exercise is a simple project which involves both artistic and engineering skills. Upon completion, this project could be presented as a birthday gift to your loved ones. The intended outcome of this project is to create the "Happy Birthday" tune using a buzzer and adding different colored LED's, which light up at each note, to make the project more visually appealing. The above-mentioned buzzer and LED's are controlled by an Arduino Uno board. This small assignment could also be used as a quick introduction to commonplace electronic components used in a wide range of electric circuits. The components used in this specific circuit, shown in the video, are listed below, with a very brief explanation of what each component does.

Components

Arduino Uno - Arduino Uno is a microcontroller with several input/output pins, used to control hardware using software. The software program could be downloaded for free off of Arduino's website. The Arduino Uno can be considered as the "brains" of this project.

Current Limiting Resistor - Any electric circuit has a power source which supplies voltage (measured in volts, V) across components and, consequently, leads to current, which is the flow of electric charge, flowing in the circuit. Current is measured in amperes, A and can be determined using Ohm's Law, V=IR. Resistors are used to limit the current flowing through electric components, thus protecting them from burning out. Resistance is measured in ohms. In this case six 220 ohm resistors are used to protect each LED. Resistors have no polarity.

LED - Light emitting diodes or LED's are semiconductor materials which emit light when supplied with voltage. The light coming from LED's are the result of photons being emitted as a result of electrons jumping a band gap. The color of the LED depends on the size of this band gap (a property of the semiconductor). LED's have polarity, and, therefore, have to be connected correctly: long pin connected to voltage supply and short pin connected to ground. For this project, three LED's (red, yellow, and green) are used, each preceded by a 220 ohm resistor to protect it from burning out.

RGB LED - An RGB LED is an LED which primarily has three LED's embedded in it: red, green, and blue. The beauty of this LED comes in the fact that different degrees of the primary colors (red, green, and blue) can be input to produce other colors like orange and purple, for example. Since an RGB LED is made up of three LED's, it requires three other 220 ohm resistors to be put in series before each pin.

Passive Buzzer - A passive buzzer is a component which produces noise when supplied with a voltage. Passive buzzers are different from active buzzers in that they can produce different pitched sounds based on how quickly they are turned on and off, making them perfect for this project. Passive buzzers have polarity and have to be connected correctly.

Code

Code Explanation

Same Concept Can Be Applied to Other Songs!