Random Noise Bursts

This dubious invention is sure to drive its victims absolutely bonkers, 100% guaranteed. When assembled and coded, this will let off random beeps at random times that go for a random length.

Parts list

What you’ll need

Step 1

Let’s build this

This is the positive leg of the buzzer. It will have a ‘+’ over top and will also be longer than the other leg.

Don’t forget to plug the board into your computer with the supplied USB cable.

Connections

Buzzer

The +LEG is the longer leg.

+ LEG11

– LEGGND

Step 2

Code some chaos

Don’t forget to select your port, like usual

Copy and paste the sample code

int buzzer = 11;

void setup() {
  // put your setup code here, to run once:
  pinMode(buzzer, OUTPUT);
}

void loop() {
  for(int i = random(1, 8); i > 0; i = i - random(1,25)) {
    tone(buzzer, random(50, 1000), random(1, 1000));
    delay(random(50, 500));
    tone(buzzer, random(500, 10000), random(1, 500));
    delay(random(50, 500));
  }
  delay(random(1000, 25000));
}

Upload the code and test it out

Step 3

Modify the madness

Change the randomness of everything

While everything in this program is very random, there are still ways that we can control this randomness. Take a look at line 15 in the code, for example, where a random delay is set in-between the noise bursts.

delay(random(1000, 25000));

What does this mean? Well, normally we set a delay like this: delay(time). The time is always in milliseconds. However, here we have random(1000, 25000) inside the brackets. While this may look a bit complicated, all this code is really doing is generating a random number between 1000 and 25000, and this is how long the delay goes for.

If we wanted this delay to go for any time between 5 and 10 seconds, we would need to use the following code:

delay(random(5000, 10000));

Don’t forget that all these numbers are in milliseconds, and 1000 milliseconds = 1 second. But the delay on line 15 isn’t the only place where you can change this random() thing. Take a look at the rest of the code and see what you can change!