Sensors are backbone of plant automation and robotics. Interfacing their output to the firmware is one of the important areas in industrial applications. Understanding their parameters is of great importance in designing a control system. Sensors such as temperature, gas, humidity, IR, ultrasonic laser, PIR etc are widely used in the industries. Developing projects involving such sensors give a clear idea in understanding their use & limitations. Data acquisition, SCADA, fuzzy logic control are few advanced level projects those usually adopt embedded systems and requires software domain knowledge particularly the “C” language.
Details about few sensor based projects
1. Contactless Liquid Level Controller:
A water level controlling mechanism is developed which senses the water level in the tank without any contact with the tank and accordingly controls the pump to fill water into the tank. Here ultrasonic sensors are used to sense the water level in the tank.
The ultrasonic sensor senses the liquid level in the water tank and feeds this information to the microcontroller. Based on the input from the sensor, the microcontroller accordingly controls the switching of the relay switch, which is a combination of a transistor and a MOSFET in this case. The relay is accordingly controlled to switch on the load in case the water level is less or switch off the load incase the water level is more.
2. Using TV remote as a cordless mouse for computer:
This system uses a TV remote as a cordless mouse to perform operations on a computer. The TV remote works on the principle of IR communication and the commands are send to the computer through a control unit.
Here the commands are sent from a TV remote in form of modulated IR rays. These rays are received by the IR receiver and converted to electrical signals which are given to the microcontroller. The microcontroller converts these signals to binary commands and sends these commands in serial form to the computer through a level shifter IC.
3. Remote Jamming Device:
Here a device is developed which produces IR rays which can block the rays from the TV remote. The frequency of the IR light is same as the frequency of IR light by the TV remote. This can be placed at the TV receiver such that the rays received by the remote are superimposed by the IR rays emitted by this device.
Here a timer powered by a battery is used to produce pulses at frequency equal to the remote output signal frequency and at more than 50% duty cycle, to drive the transistor, which is turn provides power to the IR diode and accordingly the IR diode emits IR rays at that frequency.
4. Speed Checker to detect rash driving on vehicles:
Rash driving is one of major reasons for road accidents. Most of the road accidents can be prevented if the rash driving is controlled. This is achieved by monitoring the speed of the vehicles and accordingly generates a warning when the speed of the vehicle increases. Here a speed checker system is designed where time taken by the vehicle to travel from spot on the highway to another is measured and the speed of the vehicle is accordingly calculated.
Here two IR sensors are used at two different locations. Two timers are used which receives input from the two sensors. Output from both the timers drive a NAND gate which in turn drives another timer to trigger a buzzer in case of the speed going more than the set limit. A decade counter shows the time count of the output pulses or counts the clock pulses, i.e. the time taken to move from IR sensor position to another. A speed limit is set and the distance between the two spots are fixed. Incase the timing count is less than the set time limit, the speed is known to be exceeded and correspondingly a buzzer starts ringing to give the indication.
5. Distance measurement by ultrasonic sensor:
Ultrasonic sensor can be used to measure distance of any object from a certain position. The sensor emits ultrasonic waves which are reflected back by the object. The time taken by the waves to travel back and forth is calculated and multiplied with velocity of sound to get the distance measurement.
6. Optimum Energy Management System:
This system is used as a way to manage the consumption of energy in an optimal way. It defines an easy way to save energy by controlling the switching of loads in a room only on the basis of the number of persons entering the room. The project uses IR sensors to sense the persons entering and leaving the room and accordingly the control unit controls the switching of the load.
7. Bidirectional Rotation of Induction Motor with Remote Control Device:
The exhaust fans used at homes are used only to expel out hot air from the room. These fans are operated using split phase induction motors which consist of a main winding which gets the mains supply directly and an auxiliary winding which gets the main supply through a capacitor. By interchanging the supply between the two windings, the windings can be interchanged and the direction of the motor can be changed. This project uses this principle to achieve the bidirectional rotation of the motor. The commands for the desired direction are given by a TV remote and accordingly the motor is rotated in desired direction.
8. Street lights that glows on detecting vehicle movement:
The major advantage of using LEDs as street lamps are their intensity can be controlled by controlling the power supply to the LEDs. By sensing the arrival of vehicles, the LED street lights can be made to be switched on only at the time when the vehicle passes through it. This helps to save a relevant amount of energy. This project develops a way to achieve this by using an array of LEDs to represent the street lights and pair of IR sensors is used to sense the number of vehicles on the way.
9. Density Based Traffic signal system using PIC microcontroller:
This system defines another way to optimize the use of energy and also to overcome the problem of traffic jams. By sensing the number of vehicles on each side of a junction, the time for which red light of the traffic signal glows can be controlled accordingly. This project achieves this by using LEDs as the traffic lights for each side of the junction and using IR sensors for each side to sense the number of vehicles.
Few more projects
- Movement Sensed Automatic Door Opening System
- Closed loop control of BLDC motor
- Non contact Tachometer
- Line Following Robotic Vehicle using Microcontroller
- Predefined Speed Control of BLDC motor
- Industrial Temperature Controller
- Microcontroller based speed checker system
- Speed Synchronization of multiple motors
- Dish Positioning Control by IR remote
- IR obstacle detection to actuate loads
- Speed Synchronization of multiple motors
- Precise Digital Temperature Control
- Automatic wireless health monitoring system
- Object Counter with 7 segment display
- Obstacle Avoidance Robotic Vehicle
- Tampered Energy Meter Sensing System
- Solar Energy Management System
- Object detection by ultrasonic means
- IR controlled Robotic Vehicle
- Thyristor power control by IR remote
Some more examples for sensor based projects ideas:
- Advanced Wireless Automatic Digital Pumping System for Agriculture using Soil Sensor
- Advanced Wireless Earth Quake Alarm System for Early Warning
- Temple Security System — Hi End Temple Security System with Frequency Jammer
- Integrate Intelligent Security System for Industrial Surveillance with WAP & Auto Dialer
- Driver Fatigue Accident Prevention using Eye Blink Sensor
- Eye Ball Controlled Automatic Wheel Chair
- Multisensor – Smoke, Fire, Temperature, Gas, Metal & Intruder based Security Robot – Zigbee
- RF Enabled ICU Care Taker – Life Support System
- American Sign Language based Hand Gesture Recognition & Performance
- Library Robot – Path Guiding Robotic System with Artificial Intelligence using Microcontroller
- Advanced Wireless Bank Security System with Remote Alarm and Sensor for Modern Security Application
- Design & Implementation of Railway Automation System with Sensors Network
- Motion Detection, Robotics Guidance & Proximity Sensing using Ultrasonic Technology
- Real Time Lane Detection for Autonomous Vehicles – Ultrasonic Sensor
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