In the last week I’ve been working on a device, which uses an electronic compass. I chose HMC5983, so no rocket science happening – I used the recommended layout, made a prototype PCB, populated it and wrote the firmware. Everything went smoothly on the first try.
Then I adjusted position of the components on the board, repositioned few wires and made a batch of 6 new PCB. After I populated them, the compass stopped working – the X axis showed fixed value, the other one were working properly. Strange, right? If it was one board, I would thought about damaged component. But all 6 boards featured the same behavior. After two hours I finally localized the cause of the troubles – a piezo buzzer. At least I thought it was a piezo buzzer.
My board uses a pizeo to notify the user via beeping. I used the standard 12 mm piezo in a plastic housing:
