Python: Making a beep noise
I’m trying to get the program to give me a beeping noise. I’m on a windows machine. I’ve looked at http://docs.python.org/library/winsound.html But not sure how I can program this with a barcode scanner. Here is my code for the serial barcode scanner.
ser = serial.Serial() ser.baudrate = 9600 #for windows ser.port = 2 #for COM3 ser.open() ser.write('hello') ser.close() UPDATE: Since I’m annoying my co-workers with the beep. Can I get it to come through the audio jack for headphones?
Not sure about Windows, but on Linux, there’s the command-line program called play that will play MP3s if you want to just record a compressed audio beep. You can probably get an equivalent for Windows.
13 Answers 13
On Windows, if you want to just make the computer make a beep sound:
import winsound frequency = 2500 # Set Frequency To 2500 Hertz duration = 1000 # Set Duration To 1000 ms == 1 second winsound.Beep(frequency, duration) The winsound.Beep() can be used wherever you want the beep to occur.
Or def sos(): for i in range(0, 3): winsound.Beep(2000, 100) for i in range(0, 3): winsound.Beep(2000, 400) for i in range(0, 3): winsound.Beep(2000, 100) . I should probably go back to work now 😀
The cross-platform way to do this is to print(‘\a’) . This will send the ASCII Bell character to stdout, and will hopefully generate a beep (a for ‘alert’). Note that many modern terminal emulators provide the option to ignore bell characters.
Since you’re on Windows, you’ll be happy to hear that Windows has its own (brace yourself) Beep API, which allows you to send beeps of arbitrary length and pitch. Note that this is a Windows-only solution, so you should probably prefer print(‘\a’) unless you really care about Hertz and milliseconds.
Although he asked specifically for Windows, I think this is the all around better solution, unless the WinSound API will revert to \a for OS independant. There are plenty of audio APIs as well
Frankly, I would avoid playing PC-speaker beeps altogether in a serious programming effort. If he is indeed on Windows, he should probably try to play the system theme’s default «alert» signal instead. With any luck, that signal is accessible through whatever GUI package he’s using.
@jforberg The api for that is winsound.MessageBeep which can take MB_ICONASTERISK, MB_ICONEXCLAMATION, MB_ICONHAND, MB_ICONQUESTION, and MB_OK.
If you’re using Python 3, don’t forget to use parentheses or you’ll get a syntax error. Use print(‘\a’)
$ apt-get install beep $ python >>> os.system("beep -f 555 -l 460") $ beep -f 659 -l 460 -n -f 784 -l 340 -n -f 659 -l 230 -n -f 659 -l 110 -n -f 880 -l 230 -n -f 659 -l 230 -n -f 587 -l 230 -n -f 659 -l 460 -n -f 988 -l 340 -n -f 659 -l 230 -n -f 659 -l 110 -n -f 1047-l 230 -n -f 988 -l 230 -n -f 784 -l 230 -n -f 659 -l 230 -n -f 988 -l 230 -n -f 1318 -l 230 -n -f 659 -l 110 -n -f 587 -l 230 -n -f 587 -l 110 -n -f 494 -l 230 -n -f 740 -l 230 -n -f 659 -l 460 Downvoted for two reasons: first, GNU/Linux != Debian and apt-get isn’t universal; second, you shouldn’t use os.system, use the subprocess module instead.
As a linux user trying to get a simple and cheap beep going for when a long code finishes, this was by and far the easiest solution. I especially loved the little jingle! Note that you may have to call «sudo modprobe pcspkr» and install beep before this option will work, according to askubuntu.com/questions/19906/beep-in-shell-script-not-working
@Ben Old question, but fwiw it seems pretty harsh to downvote this. The question relates to an area with no cross-platform solution as I understand it. The accepted answer with 140 likes is Windows-specific. And you don’t explain why a legitimate module is «bad» practice.
There’s a Windows answer, and a Debian answer, so here’s a Mac one:
This assumes you’re just here looking for a quick way to make a customisable alert sound, and not specifically the piezeoelectric beep you get on Windows:
Disclaimer: You can replace os.system with a call to the subprocess module if you’re worried about someone hacking on your beep code.
I was searching for the same but for Linux shell.
The topic brought me to an answer, -thanks-
Maybe more pythonic manner :
import os beep = lambda x: os.system("echo -n '\a';sleep 0.2;" * x) beep(3) - the sleep value (here 0.2), depends on the length (seconds) of your default beep sound
- I choosed to use os.system rather then subprocess.Popen for simplicity (it could be bad)
- the ‘-n’ for echo is to have no more display
- the last ‘;’ after sleep is necessary for the resulting text sequence (*x)
- also tested through ssh on an X term
Python has an equivalent of both echo ( print ) and sleep , so it is actually not pythonic to go through external calls, especially when they are (non-portable) Unix calls.
@bumbumpaw the (3) is passed to the lambda as the x argument. For this specific case, the «echo -n ‘\a’;sleep 0.2;» string will be concatenated 3 time with itself generating the string «echo -n ‘\a’;sleep 0.2;echo -n ‘\a’;sleep 0.2;echo -n ‘\a’;sleep 0.2;» before actual call to the os.system function.
I found this library to be helpful: Install beepy,
There are 6 different sound options, you can see details here: https://pypi.org/project/beepy/
Code snip to listen to all the sounds:
import beepy as beep for ii in range(1,7): beep.beep(ii) I had an issue with winsound.Beep(. ) in w10 (I needed to run troubleshooter to solve it each time I run winsound.Beep(. ) ), but this solved it.
@user_007 I was also getting some errors after running it the first few times. I’m not sure what the problem was but I ended up bagging it and using ‘\a’ instead.
import time import sys for i in range(1,6): sys.stdout.write('\r\a'.format(i=i)) sys.stdout.flush() time.sleep(1) sys.stdout.write('\n') If you want beep from Zelda or Mario theme :
!pip install chime import chime chime.theme('zelda') chime.success() chime.warning() chime.error() chime.info() chime.notify_exceptions() 1/0 Using pygame on any platform
The advantage of using pygame is that it can be made to work on any OS platform. Below example code is for GNU/Linux though.
First install the pygame module for python3 as explained in detail here.
The pygame module can play .wav and .ogg files from any file location. Here is an example:
#!/usr/bin/env python3 import pygame pygame.mixer.init() sound = pygame.mixer.Sound('/usr/share/sounds/freedesktop/stereo/phone-incoming-call.oga') sound.play() On linux: print(‘\007’) will make the system bell sound.
I have made a package for that purpose.
from pybeep.pybeep import PyVibrate, PyBeep PyVibrate().beep() PyVibrate().beepn(3) PyBeep().beep() PyBeep().beepn(3) It depends on sox and only supports python3.
def beep(): output.eval_js('new Audio("data:audio/wav;base64,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").play()') beep() Notebook developers must add a beep function to the output.