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Thin Speaker
If you want to get some sound out of your project but have a tight space budget, this is a good way to do it. This 0.25W, 8Ohm speaker is only 40mm in diameter and just over 4mm thick, the same kind you might find in one of those "talking greeting cards".
- [Datasheet](http://cdn.sparkfun.com/datasheets/Components/General/8ohm 0.25w speaker.pdf)
- Dimensional Drawing
Thin Speaker Product Help and Resources
The Uncertain 7-Cube
March 8, 2013
The Uncertain 7-Cube is a non-committal, less-than-helpful, but also entirely honest fortune teller. Simply ask it a yes or no question, give it a nudge, and the 7-Cube will dutifully inform you that it doesn’t have all the facts and doesn’t feel comfortable making a guess.
Getting Started with the LilyPad MP3 Player
May 8, 2013
The LilyPad MP3 Player is an amazing little board that contains almost everything you need to play audio files. You can use it to create all kinds of noisy projects, from MP3 hoodies to talking teddy bears. Your imagination is the only limit! This tutorial will help you get started.
Cackling Apple Head Witch
October 30, 2014
Make your own cackling apple head witch to scare all of the trick or treaters this Halloween!
Wires
The wires are thin and you have to be careful about handling it with the thin speakers. I recommend adding hot glue or electrical tape to reinforce the connection. I actually soldered thicker gauge wires to the speakers and it works better. =)
Core Skill: Electrical Prototyping
If it requires power, you need to know how much, what all the pins do, and how to hook it up. You may need to reference datasheets, schematics, and know the ins and outs of electronics.
Skill Level: Noob - You don't need to reference a datasheet, but you will need to know basic power requirements.
See all skill levels
Comments
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We welcome your comments and suggestions below. However, if you are looking for solutions to technical questions please see our Technical Assistance page.
Customer Reviews
3.6 out of 5
Based on 5 ratings:
2 of 2 found this helpful:
Worked great!
I used this combined with the Sparkfun BOB-11044 mono audio amp breakout to add a horn to my son's pinewood derby car. Thanks to this, his car took the top trophies for "Best Design" and "Most Unique"!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77ooYO6SoW0&list=UU_KRz06_ctCfOWvmzMhSU4Q&index=1
EDIT: Somehow I accidentally gave this 4 stars when I meant to give it 5. It seems I can't edit that part of the review. Sorry. @Sparkfun, feel free to correct and remove this edit note.
1 of 1 found this helpful:
Great speaker but very poor choice of wire
First the speaker does actually work, all you need to do is plug it into a function gen and i set mine to about 3.5 Vpp and it worked great. That being said the choice of wire is pretty bad. The wire is stranded and it feels like after just a small amount of use that the wire is close to breaking off of the speaker, also its very difficult to plug the male leads of the wire into a breadboard, I was able to get it to plug into female header connectors but they dont stay without you hold them. All in all I would probably recommend another more robust speaker, or atleast different connecting wires. UPDATE: Just after writing this review, having had only used the speaker for about 30 minutes one of the leads has broken off of the speaker.
Sorry to hear your units has broken. With these being only $1, there are some quality limitations. Contact us at Tech Support @ Sparkfun.com and we'll be happy to credit you for the broken speaker.
Nice Little Piezo
These are nice little piezo speakers and great for student use (e.g. photoresistor Theramin). They run directly off an Uno output, keeping introductory wiring simple. The wires are too fine to attach directly, so we pin them into the headers using short lengths of 22 ga solid wire. As mentioned, the speaker wire solder joints are fragile and my students either tape the wires down or put a drop of hot glue on each one.
Works, but has a flaw
It's a pretty good speaker (knowing that it costs only 0.90 €) but its flaw are the two cables. They are litterally the weakest piece of electronic I've ever seen. When I connected it to my breadboard, the two cables immediato bent, unable to support the weight of the speaker, also because their ends are too short to completely fit inside the holes of a breadboard. I tried removing some of the plastic around the cable so that it could connect better. At first it worked more or less fine, but when I deattached it from the circuit, one of the cables decided to remain in the breadboard, completely broke. Knowing that the other one was gonna have the same fate, I had to cut it and to solder a pair of way more robust and reliable cables It wasn't a real problem, but it was surely annoying
-------------------- Tech Support Tips/Troubleshooting/Common Issues --------------------
Wires
The wires are thin and you have to be careful about handling it with the thin speakers. I recommend adding hot glue or electrical tape to reinforce the connection. I actually soldered thicker gauge wires to the speakers and it works better. =)
Just a point of amusement. I have a sound module out of a greeting card and it uses this exact speaker. Made me chuckle a little.
I read the Dimensional Drawing, and in the back of my head I heard my high school physics teacher yelling at me, "UNITS! Where's your Units??
when I was soldering longer leads to the built in leads the built in leads broke. so I improvised by soldering my wires to the terminal where the built in leads were. then that whole thing (with the solder points) broke off, leaving the speaker useless. and it made good sound whe hooked up to my PICAXE too. :(
the price is right :)
I didn't read the datasheet and assumed that this was a piezo speaker. It's actually an eletromagnetic speaker with a coil. I hooked it up directly to the output pin of my arduino pro mini (5V), and I think I blew out a couple of pins. :-(
Nevermind... just loose wires... it seems to work great wired up directly to an arduino pin.
Do you have one slightly larger in dia. and one fourth " thick ,I need one for a police scanner ?
How does this speaker perform at full-range, vocals I assume sound good as this is a greeting card speaker.. Will instruments be heard?
Help me out I'm a noob... Are speakers polarized? How would one control the volume of this?
Speakers do have 'polarity', in a way, although whether or not you'll care depends on various circumstances. For headphones, for example, it's fairly important that you do get the polarity the same (whether correct or incorrect, as long as they're both correct, or both incorrect) as otherwise your brain starts playing tricks on you. For room speakers it becomes less of an issue, although in some circumstances you can get cancellation effects going that, again, make things sound odd. So it can't hurt to at least wire the speakers up the same way.
You do run into some problems if you have dissimilar speakers and aren't sure which pin is which. One trick you can use on larger speakers is to just apply a small DC voltage (an AA battery, for example), and when the speaker cone is pushed outward, note which battery terminal (positive vs negative) you applied to which pin.
I don't think you'd be able to easily use that method on this thin speaker (the deflection would be quite minor and difficult to spot). However, you don't have to. On this speaker, the + is actually marked on the speaker itself. It's not easy to see and looks more like just a thick line at one of the solder pads, but it's there :)
So this is something that you could connect straight to a PWM output on an Arduino or equivalent to play sounds?
I just got a Freetronics EtherTen and a Gameduino a few days ago, so I'm new.
cool
Can we get a profile shot? We are talking about how thin this is after all. :)
The last photo has it in profile next to our NIST-calibrated quarter.
How much does a NIST-calibrated quarter go for? $0.25? :)
Yes, but the locked, climate-controlled, dust-free case we keep it in between shoots was really expensive.
Could you please put that quarter next to a nickel so we can see how thick your quarter is?
Could you please put a dime next to the nickel so we can see how thick your nickel is so we can see how thick your quarter is?
Could you please put a ruler next to the dime so we can see how tick everyting is?
Could you please put a speaker next to the ruler so we can see how big the ruler is?
WAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Could you please put a ruler next to the ruler so we know how big the rulers are?
Could you please place a chain of helium atoms next to the ruler next to the ruler on top of the speaker next to the dime next to the nickel next to the quarter so we can see how thick they are?
Could you please search your couch cushions for another two quarters and a nickel so you can just buy the damn speaker and hush already?
Could you please place the center of the ruler on top of the speaker then place the quarter on one end of the ruler then immediately slam down on the other end of the ruler. The greatest height of the quarter will give a great indication of how thick the speaker is.