Print Page - EFY Magazine projects

An effort to put up Construction projects published in Electronics For you Magazine will be done here in this thread regularly. If any other member too has any access to any construction articles from the magazine, is most welcome to post it here. All articles will include schematics, full articles with PCB layouts and codes. Thus material whatever available from the magazine will be posted here, and these are not my projects. Any claims about its non working or discussions about the same may be continued on the regular discussion forums. This thread will be exclusively for posting projects only.
Requests for any EFY published projects such as Code or other info may be continued on this thread:
EFY Magazine projects Requests Code or More
http://www.sonsivri.com/forum/index.php?topic=37591.0

EDIT: Ask for code or hijack this topic and your post will be deleted, and a warning given. Help keep topic clean

1. Microcontroller based water level controller with LCD
Many a times we forget to switch off the motor pushing water into the overhead tank (OHT) in our households. As a result, water keeps overflowing until we notice the overflow and switch the pump off. As the OHT is usually kept on the top most floor, it is cumbersome to go up frequently to check the water level in the OHT.
Here’s a microcontroller-based water- level controller-cum-motor protector to solve this problem. It controls ‘on’ and ‘off’ conditions of the motor depending upon the level of water in the tank. The status is displayed on an LCD module. The circuit also protects the motor from high voltages, low voltages, fluctuations of mains power and dry running.
Enjoy

Remote-controlled 6-Camera CCTV Switcher
Here is a Microcontroller based remote-controlled CCTV switcher circuit to monitor six cameras on a single or dual monitor/TV. The original project is designed so that the audio is routed to a separate audio amplifier, and two RCA jacks are given for 2 video outputs. But as a fact that every TV or monitor will have an A/V input, one of the output may be connected to audio whereas other to the video output. All source codes are included in the file.

Water-Tank-Filling Guard System
This water-tank-filling guard system for your overhead and ground tanks automatically switches off the pumping system when the overhead tank starts overflowing or the ground tank is empty.
http://rapidshare.com/files/434791473/Water_tank_filling_guard_system.rar
http://www.4shared.com/file/-BNtyRTV/Water_tank_filling_guard_syste.html
http://ifile.it/fyugrz0

Secure Digital Access System using iButton
Access control forms a vital link in a security chain. Here we describe a secure digital access
system using iButton that allows only authorised persons to access a restricted area.
http://rapidshare.com/files/434791878/Secured_digital_acess_system_with_iButton.rar
http://www.4shared.com/file/nOt9vg4E/Secured_digital_acess_system_w.html
http://ifile.it/c0gwmof

RFID based security system
A radio-frequency identification (RFID) based access-control system allows only
authorised persons to enter a particular area of an establishment. The authorised
persons are provided with unique tags, using which they can access that area.
http://rapidshare.com/files/441417832/RFID_Based_secirity_system.rar
http://www.4shared.com/file/NBmhEyTa/RFID_Based_secirity_system.html
http://ifile.it/v912ulq

Photo Voltaic charge controllerA charge controller is one of the main components of a solar battery charging system. Its main function
is to fully charge a battery without permitting overcharge or reverse current flow (generally during night).
http://rapidshare.com/files/441417977/Photovoltaic_battery_charge_controller.rar
http://www.4shared.com/file/b2DpYCVf/Photovoltaic_battery_charge_co.html
http://ifile.it/iut7vp0

Tutorial on ATmega32 Development Board (Part 1 of 2) Here we describe a development board that is based on the popular AVR ATmega32 microcontroller and meets the needs of both the beginners as well as professionals. The first part is published and the second part of the article is expected next month.
http://rapidshare.com/files/452611293/Atmega32_development_Board_Pt1.rar
http://ifile.it/bcq1kn4
http://www.4shared.com/file/e2xFQFLY/Atmega32_development_Board_Pt1.html

Interfacing Nokia Colour LCD With AVR Microcontroller
Here we describe how to use the colour LCD of a Nokia handset (model 6100, 7210, 6610, 7250 or 6220) with Philips PCF8833
chipset through ATmega2560 ATMEL AVR microcontroller.
http://rapidshare.com/files/453120503/Interfacing_Nokia_LCD_with_AVR.rar
http://www.4shared.com/file/qaf4_H4x/Interfacing_Nokia_LCD_with_AVR.html
http://ifile.it/zv93mbh

Automatic Room Power Controller
The circuit presented here senses the absence of occupants in a room and automatically shuts off the power to a particular
appliance, say, a tubelight or fan. It turns on the appliance again when someone enters the room.
http://rapidshare.com/files/453119841/Automatic_room_power_controller.rar
http://www.4shared.com/file/b5q4mLil/Automatic_room_power_controlle.html
http://ifile.it/irajpu8

Getting The Right Driver For Your LED Application
Semiconductor industry is moving from simply selling power supply regulators as LED drivers to making dedicated products that can drive LEDs in various applications. Selection of the LED driver and specifications depends on the kind of application that you are designing. This article comes handly to uderstand the concepts and point to remember while choosing right drivers for your LED applications.

http://rapidshare.com/files/453120223/Getting_right_driver_for_LED_applications.rar
http://www.4shared.com/file/z5OHe7cP/Getting_right_driver_for_LED_a.html
http://ifile.it/5tlg03y

Eight-Channel Data Acquisition & Logging System (April 2010) Uploaded by request.
In environments like factories, power plants and transformers in electricity substations, controlling temperature to a safe value is important. Supervisory and control systems are used to monitor the temperature and other physical parameters on a centralised machine whereby one can monitor and control the remote devices. The AVR microcontroller-based system described here does the same job of acquiring the analogue data and sending it to a remote terminal for monitoring.
http://www.4shared.com/file/qv-bDAgF/Eight_Channel_Data_Acquisition.html
http://rapidshare.com/files/456576412/Eight_Channel_Data_Acquisition.rar
http://ifile.it/ourj9fq

Tutorial on ATmega32 Development Board (Part 2 of 2)
Part 1 of this article in March issue discussed five applications of the AVR Atmega32 microcontroller. Here we explore some more features of this microcontroller, including the external interrupt module, EEPROM module, analogue comparator module, 16-bit and 8-bit timer/counter modules and pulse-width modulation (PWM).
https://rapidshare.com/files/459888326/Atmega_32_development_board_Part_2.rar
http://www.4shared.com/file/iqQB3MzL/Tutorial_on_Atmega_32_developm.html
http://ifile.it/74s0h3u

Stepper Motor Controller Using AT89C51 (Uploaded by request from santhoshaxl)
Stepper motors are used for precision position control in many applications like floppy drives, printers, process control instruments, robotics and machine tool control. Here is a microcontroller AT89C51-based stepper motor controller that can accurately control the rotation direction, speed and number of revolutions with help of six tactile switches.
https://rapidshare.com/files/459888875/Stepper_motor_controller_using_89C51.rar
http://www.4shared.com/file/0jfcznZn/Stepper_motor_controller_using.html
http://ifile.it/nlx9ca8

Digital Temperature Controller Using Thermocouple
Digital temperature controllers are essential for temperature measurement and control of instrumentation in industries. These are used for home appliances too. The circuit presented here is highly reliable and accurate yet easy an dinexpensive to build and can meaure temperatures from 0 to 999 degrees Celsuis using Ktype Thermo couple.
https://rapidshare.com/files/459889150/Digital_temperature_controller_using_thermocouple.rar
http://www.4shared.com/file/50vmwXfn/Digital_temperature_controller.html
http://ifile.it/261iwdj

Arduino Based Vehicle Parking Counter
This vehicle counter counts the number of cars and the vacant space available in a parking lot and shows the values on a three-digit dual-colour display. The number of cars is shown in red colour and the space available in green colour.
http://www.4shared.com/file/k3M76iVf/Arduino_Based_Parking_Counter.html
http://ifile.it/tp0ofmu
https://rapidshare.com/files/1187337473/Arduino_Based_Parking_Counter.rar

AVR Programmer Using AVR910 Protocol
Newbies often have difficulty getting started with programming of AVR microcontroller memory. What they need is a simple documentation and the entire code for AVR memory programming.
https://rapidshare.com/files/3328050085/AVR_Programming_Using_910_Protocol.rar
http://www.4shared.com/file/7GWMi_jP/AVR_Programming_Using_910_Prot.html
http://ifile.it/delanvo

Microcontroller-based Scientific Calculator
A scientific calculator gives you quick access to certain mathematical functions. Basically, it’s an electronic calculator designed to solve problems in science, engineering and mathematics.
https://rapidshare.com/files/1056337004/Microcontroller_Based_Scientific_Calculator.rar
http://www.4shared.com/file/AUNSQyRb/Microcontroller_Based_Scientif.html
http://ifile.it/567kydc

Over-Speed Alarm for Two-Wheelers
Here we present the circuit of a simple and easy-to-use over-speed indicator based on Hall effect sensor, which alerts the user of over speeding of the vehicle compared to the limit set by the circuit.
http://www.4shared.com/document/_AvE83h2/Over_Speed_alarm_4_2Wheelers.html
https://rapidshare.com/files/2880195279/Over_Speed_alarm_4_2Wheelers.pdf
http://ifile.it/4l3krdw

Microcontroller-Based Light Chaser
Light chaser can be used to create lighting animation sequences. It has been used in the past to draw attention to advertising and promotion; for example, the marquee at the local movie theater. It can also be used to produce pleasing effects for entertainment. Here we present AT89S51 microcontroller-based light chaser. Related software and codes are given as link on a text file. The software file is 35 MB+ which i found difficult to upload on the 3 servers due to low speed of my internet connection.
https://rapidshare.com/files/3404872703/Microcontrollerbased_Light_chaser.rar
http://www.4shared.com/file/PTGOW8Pb/Microcontrollerbased_Light_cha.html
http://ifile.it/rcmz51f

Remote controlled Real Time Controller with device controller. (EFY April 2007) Posted on request by santhoshaxl.
This project makes use of a TV remote control. Using RC5 coding, a real-time clock chip is set to control five different alarm settings. These settings can also be used to switch on an external device. Up to eight devices can be controlled with this project. The circuit is based on ATMEL ATmega16 microcontroller and Maxim’s DS1307 real-time clock chip.
An LCD module allows for user interface.
https://rapidshare.com/files/337745415/Remote_Controlled_RTC.rar
http://www.4shared.com/file/01hTbOh1/Remote_Controlled_RTC.html
http://ifile.it/2p9wq1g

Automatic Water Level Controller for sump and submersible pumps.
The normal sump pump water level controller cannot be used for submersible pumps, as the method to start the motor is different. The submersible pump comes with a starter unit designed for it. To switch it on/off automatically some additional
circuits are required. Presented here is an automatic water level controller for submersible as well as sump pumps.
The essential features of this controller include:
1. Water level-sensing and control circuit
2. Dry sump/no-flow sensor and delay circuit
3. Auto timer cut-off circuit
4. Submersible pump-starter activation circuit

https://rapidshare.com/files/1714172077/Automatic_WLC_for_sump_and_submersible.pdf
http://www.4shared.com/document/jUlyd1hf/Automatic_WLC_for_sump_and_sub.html
http://ifile.it/dvi4uhb

Programmable Industrial on-off Timer With RF Remote
In most of the modern manufacturing and processing industries, there is complete industrial automation through sophisticated hardware
and software like programmable logic controller (PLC), distributed control system (DCS), and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA). Microcontroller-based embedded systems play major role in industrial automation. One such widely used system is the Programmable timer. The major applications of programmable timer are as follows:
1. Initiating the process after desired time
2. Switching on/off the process after predetermined time
3. Providing delay in between processes
4. Applying input to on/off type open-loop control system
Depending upon the requirement of process, one can set the time of programmable timer. As the time period expires, the timer will either trigger or shut the process. Earlier there were mechanical timers that used gear assembly (same as wall clock) and mechanical contacts. But the problem with these was that due to mechanical parts and movements, they were not durable. Electronic timers have become very popular as these have more functionalities and long operating life.

https://rapidshare.com/files/2828891844/Programmable_Industrial_on-off_Timer_With_RF_Remote.zip
http://www.4shared.com/file/uUn_zLHk/Programmable_Industrial_on-off.html
http://ifile.it/ew8qy0a

Metal Detector Using Difference Resonator
Described here is a simple circuit that can detect metallic conductors in its vicinity up to a range of 25 to 30 millimetres. Concealed metallic objects such as metal foils enclosed in a plastic cover, e.g., toothpaste tubes, and small objects like refill tips made of magnetic materials too can be detected using this circuit. However, very thin metallic foils may go undetected due to a large resistance. This is a Circuit Idea and thus no PCB layout available.
https://rapidshare.com/files/3421461827/Metal_detector.pdf
http://www.4shared.com/document/W6Pnzy45/Metal_detector.html
http://ifile.it/95ml8f2

Mains monitor ( Construction project EFY DEC 2011 ) Conditions like heavy load and line faults can cause the mains supply to sag or surge without warning. This can damage the appliances and equipment powered by the mains supply, unless these are automatically switched off by a protection device like the mains monitor presented here.This mains monitor continuously monitors the mains voltage and immediately disconnects power to the load if the mains voltage goes beyond the predefined limit. As the mains power returns to its normal voltage, it reconnects the load after a preset time delay. Also, it tells whether a mains disruption occurred while you were out. The acceptable voltage range and the time taken before the power is restored to the load can be set by the user.
From this post onwards all the links will be limited exclusively to Sonsivri members only. Thus links are uploaded in the text file as attachment. Please do not share links in open forum.

Moving Message display on LCD (EFY DEC 2011)Moving-message displays are ideal to get your message (advertisements, greetings, etc) across in an eye-catching way. You can make an LCD show a brief moving message by interfacing it to a microcontroller. Here’s an AVR-based moving message display that uses a 16×2 LCD display incorporating HD44780. The 16×2 LCD can display 16 characters per line and there are two such lines.
Links are exclusively for Sonsivri members. Thus links are uploaded in the text file as attachment. Please do not share links in open forum.

Microcontroller-Based Clock Using DS1307. Digital wall clocks, table clocks and desk clocks with pointer or LCD display are readily available in the market. Here we present a clock that can be built in a small budget using AT89C2051 microcontroller. Additional feature of the clock is that the time display is visible even in the dark

Links are exclusively for Sonsivri members. Thus links are uploaded in the text file as attachment. Please do not share links in open forum.

Constant current battery charger.This circuit provides constant current charging for batteries like nickel-cadmium (Ni-Cd), nickel-metal hydride (Ni-MH) and lithium-ion (Li-ion). The charger maintains constant current flow by using the property of the transistor that allows the current through the collector to be almost equal to the current through the emitter. This is a project published under "Circuit Idea" section and thus PCB layout is not available.

Links are exclusively for Sonsivri members. Thus links are uploaded in the text file as attachment. Please do not share links in open forum.

Solar LED Lantern
This solar LED lantern can be used as an emergency light. Its 6V battery can be charged eitherfrom 230V, 50Hz AC mains or a 12V, 10W
solar panel. Two LED indicators have been provided—red LED (LED1) indicates battery charging and green LED (LED2) indicates fully-charged battery.

Links are exclusively for Sonsivri members. Thus links are uploaded in the text file as attachment. Please do not share links in open forum.

Solar tracking system
Generally, solar panels are stationary and do not follow the movement of the sun. Here is a solar tracker system that tracks the sun’s movement across the sky and tries to maintain the solar panel perpendicular to the sun’s rays,ensuring that the maximum amount of sunlight is incident on the panel throughout the day. The solar tracker starts following the sun right from dawn, throughout the day till evening, and starts all over again from the dawn next day. This is a project published under "Circuit Idea" section and thus PCB layout is not available.
Links are exclusively for Sonsivri members. Thus links are uploaded in the text file as attachment. Please do not share links in open forum.

Ultrasonic Transmitter and Receiver
Most ultrasonic transmitters and receivers are built around timer IC 555 or complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) devices. These devices are preset-controlled variable oscillators. The preset value of the working frequency is likely to drift due to mechanical vibrations or variations in temperature. This drift in frequency affects the range of transmission from the ultrasonic transducer.

Links are exclusively for Sonsivri members. Thus links are uploaded in the text file as attachment. Please do not share links in open forum.

Microcontroller-based intelligent traffic light system
Traffic light intervals are fixed independent of the traffic movement. So sometimes large redlight delays cause traffic congestion. Here is a microcontroller-based intelligent traffic light system that reduces the possibility of traffic jams caused by traffic light delays to an extent.

Links are exclusively for Sonsivri members. Thus links are uploaded in the text file as attachment. Please do not share links in open forum.

Radio-frequency identification (RFID) based Automatic vehicle parking system With technology development, the RFID technology is used widely in vehicle parking systems of malls and buildings. The system normally consists of a vehicle counter, sensors, display board, gate controller, RFID tags and RFID reader. Presented here is a similar prject of automatic vehicle parking system using AT89S52 microcontroller.

Links are exclusively for Sonsivri members. Thus links are uploaded in the text file as attachment. Please do not share links in open forum.

Wireless water level indicator
Using this system, you can remotely monitor the water level of an overhead tank that is placed up to 30 metres away. The system features an RF transmitter and receiver pair, doing away with the need to run wires from the roof to ground. The transmitter is placed near the tank with sensors inside the tank to monitor the level of water. The sensed level is streamed wirelessly through the RF transmitter. This is received by the receiver unit placed remotely and decoded to indicate the water level on an LCD. It also has a buzzer that beeps when the water level drops below onefourth level or when the tank is about to overflow. This signal output can be used to drive a relay which will in turn control the pump.
Links are exclusively for Sonsivri members. Thus links are uploaded in the text file as attachment. Please do not share links in open forum.

Automatic Fan Controller For Air-conditioners
Many central air-conditioning systems (ACs) have the option for cooling and heating both. These have a fan for blowing hot or cold air drawn from a central unit, often with no automatic speed control for the fan. The speed of the AC fand has to be adjusted manually to maintain a comfortable temperature through out the room. So this project presented here which would automatically control the fan and control the room temperature.
Links are exclusively for Sonsivri members. Thus links are uploaded in the text file as attachment. Please do not share links in open forum.

Live Home Security System
Presented here is a simple and inexpensive PC-based home security system. It uses a simple interfacing circuitry, and is developed using Perl and Shell scripts and tested on Linux (Ubuntu 9.10) environment. The computer should be connected to the Internet, webcam, speaker and microphone.

Links are exclusively for Sonsivri members. Thus links are uploaded in the text file as attachment. Please do not share links in open forum.

Automatic Car Parking Space Management System
Car parking lots in buildings are usually managed manually with manned kiosks that allow the cars into the parking lot based on the space available. This innovative project manages parking based on empty slots available thus managing parking in a improved way.

Links are exclusively for Sonsivri members. Thus links are uploaded in the text file as attachment. Please do not share links in open forum.

Dynamic Display Using LED Strip Surface-mount device (SMD) LEDs are becoming popular because of their low power consumption and high brightness. These LEDs are readily available in the market in many colours both as single LEDs and LED strips. A microcontroller is put in to use to create various lighting effects.

Links are exclusively for Sonsivri members. Thus links are uploaded as attachment. Please do not share links in open forum.

GSM based borewell water level monitor
If the water level in a borewell drops below the threshold level for pumping, its pump motor may get air-locked or even burn out due to dry running. It is inconvenient for farmers to walk all the way to their fields at night just to switch the pump motor ‘off.’ Besides, he may never get to know the problem.
Links are exclusively for Sonsivri members. Thus links are uploaded as attachment. Please do not share links in open forum.

Port interfacing in java through microcontroller
A serial port interfacing circuit built around AT89C51 microcontroller is presented here for testing and understanding a serial port emulator. It can be used to control a USB port also by using a serial to USB converter.

Links are exclusively for Sonsivri members. Thus links are uploaded as attachment. Please do not share links in open forum.

Anti Car jack system.
Consider this: A criminal stops your car by force and you are left with no option but to surrender the car. The criminal drives away your car, but about 60 seconds later the engine stops running on its own and won’t restart. Unable to use the dead vehicle, the perpetrator has to abandon it.

Links are exclusively for Sonsivri members. Thus links are uploaded as attachment. Please do not share links in open forum.

RF based multiple device control using microcontroller
Here we describe how to control electrical and electronic gadgets from a remote location using radio frequency (RF) transmission. An RF interface is used instead of infrared (IR) to avoid the drawbacks of an IR interface.

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Touch screen control for wheel chair
A wheelchair is a chair with wheels, designed to be a replacement for walking. The device comes in variations where it is propelled by motors or by the seated occupant turning the rear wheels by hand. Wheelchairs are used by people for whom walking is difficult or impossible due to illness, injury or disability.

Links are exclusively for Sonsivri members. Thus links are uploaded as attachment. Please do not share links in open forum.

Wave generator
In the world of hobbyists, the function generator ranks pretty high in the list of essential items for the lab bench. However, commercial
units can be very expensive. This makes function generators a prime candidate for home construction.

Links are exclusively for Sonsivri members. Thus links are uploaded as attachment. Please do not share links in open forum.

Electronic card lock for appliances
The circuit presented here can be used as a lock for important electronic and electrical appliances. When a card is inserted inside its mechanism, depending upon the positions of the holes punched on the card, a particular appliance is switched on.

Links are exclusively for Sonsivri members. Thus links are uploaded as attachment. Please do not share links in open forum

GPS- and GSM-Based Vehicle Tracking System(Sept 2012)
Presented here is a microcontroller-based project for tracking a vehicle using global positioning system (GPS) and global system for mobile communication (GSM). The system allows you to track your vehicle anytime anywhere. The system can be fitted in your vehicle in a hidden or suitable compartment after which you may easily track its location using Mobile and dialling the sim number of the GSM module attached with the GPS. In turn you'll get a SMS back with the location of the vehicle.

Links are exclusively for Sonsivri members. Thus links are uploaded as attachment. Please do not share links in open forum
Please note: Here onwards I'll be sharing files uploaded to "4shared.com" and "filecloud.io" as Rapidshare eat all my previously uploaded files and my account too.

Digital Drawing Pad Using Graphical Lcd and Touch Screen (EFY Sept 2012)
You can use your iPad as a digital drawing pad when you need to illustrate something and you don’t have pen and paper handy. Its a faster method of drawing and you save paper and ink at the same time.Designers aren't the only ones to be benfited by a digital drawing pad. It is great for presentations, Design studies, product concept designs, Illustraions, story board and many more..

As Ipad is quite expensive, here we present a digital drawing pad which is made with the help of a Graphical Liquid Crystal Display having controller KS0108 and 4 wire resistive touch screen, both interfaced to an Atmega 16 microcontroller.

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AVR Bootloader Circuit for Trouble-free Programming (EFY Sept 2012)
Normally, ATMEL’s AVR microcontrollers are programmed using programmers. There are many ways to program the AVR microcontrollers, such as in-system programming, parallel programming and using bootloader.

Links are exclusively for Sonsivri members. Thus links are uploaded as attachment. Please do not share links in open forum

PC-Based GPS Receiver (EFY OCT 2012)
today, there are many gadgets available with GPS technology. GPS stands for ‘global positioning system.’ It provides the data corresponding to the position of the GPS receiver itself on international-standard latitude-longitude basis, in addition to the standard coordinated universal time (UTC), along with some more information received from the nearest satellite assigned for this purpose.

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Battery Bank Protector With Multiple Features (EFY October 2012)
The prime function of a battery management system is to provide the necessary monitoring and control to protect the battery bank from out-of-tolerance ambient or operating conditions, saving the user from the consequences of battery failures. This circuit uses a PIC microcontroller as its heart to control vital functions.

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Sequential Timer for DC Motor Control (EFY OCT 2012)
Most industrial processes require rotation of the motors in forward and reverse directions for desired periods. One good example is the automated bottle filling plant. Here the bottles move on a conveyor belt.

Links are exclusively for Sonsivri members. Thus links are uploaded as attachment. Please do not share links in open forum

1kW Sinewave Inverter (EFY NOV 2012)
An inverter provides power backup for mains-based appliances in the event of a power failure. Most of the inverters available in the market have complicated circuit design and are not very economical. Some of them produce a square-wave output, which is undesirable for inductive loads.

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Presence Sensing Lights Controller (EFY November 2012)
Many a times we forget to switch off appliances like lights, fans and air-conditioner before leaving home. This leads to a considerable wastage of electricity apart from reducing the life of the appliances. This project includes a 3 digit up/down counter which is interfaced to a relay whcih activates when the count increases to 001 remains ON untill it is 000 to swicth off.

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Sun Tracker With Position Display (EFY November 2012)
The power generated from solar panels cannot be directly used in many applications. One of the key reasons is that the sun is not stationary as it keeps moving from east to west. The movement is controlled with a stepper motor interfaced with Atmega16 Microcontroller.

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MSP430G2231-based Temperature Indicator and Controller (EFY December 2012) The ambient temperature must be within certain limits for instruments to work properly. Therefore temperature is the most measured process variable in industrial automation.

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Smart Solar Charger (EFY January 2013)
Solar-powered lighting systems are now used in rural as well as urban areas. These systems include solar lanterns, solar home lighting systems, solar streetlights, solar garden lights, solar water heaters and solar power packs.

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PC-Based Fingerprint Scanner (EFY Feb 2013)
Computerized fingerprint scanners have been in use in police stations, high-security buildings, time-attendance systems and even PC keyboards for quite some time. Here we describe the construction and working of such a PC-based fingerprint security system.

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Robocar With Wireless Steering (EFY FEB 2013 )
We have seen many projects where a robot is controlled by a remote controller. Here we describe a robot that can be steered in any direction just like you drive your car. Wireless steering senses the motion and transmits corresponding instruction to control the robot through RF communication.

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SMS-based Automation System (EFY March 2013)
Presented here is a system that can be used to remote control devices using a mobile phone. Short messaging service (SMS) is used here to send triggering commands. The main attractive feature of this system is that the user can control the desired device from any part of the world.

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31-channel RF Remote Control (EFY March 2013)
Can you imagine, how convenient your life would be if you could control various appliances inside or outside your house wirelessly. This uses the popular 89S52 to encode and the same chip to decode on the other side. The RF link is eshatblished with the 433Mhz ask modules.
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GSM-based Dot-matrix Display (EFY April 2013)
Nowadays, LED message displays are becoming very popular for transmitting information to large groups of people quickly. The said circuit displays messages sent by SMS and uses two 89V51RD2 microcontrollers, one for communication and other for controlling the display section. 7 x 40 matrix is used here but can easily upgrade for larger displays by modifying the code as well including the required shift register sections.

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RF-based Motion-sensing Robot (EFY April 2013)
We have seen many projects where a robot is controlled by a remote controller. Here we present a robot that can be moved in any direction just by the movement of your hand. The movement of wireless controller is sensed by the accelerometer. The data from the accelerometer is compared by the comparator and corresponding encoded instructions are transmitted through the RF transmitter to control the robot. The robot receives the instructions and the microcontroller section drives the motors corresponding to the instructions
received

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Smart Power Control System (EFY April 2013)
Here we describe an RF-based power control system using AVR microcontroller. This system provides three main facilities: automatic room power control, bidirectional visitor counter and automatic front-door light control. It will find applications in office and commercial buildings having separate entry and exit gates. This automatic system will not only save electricity by automatically switching off the mains power line but also count the number of people entering and leaving the building. When everybody has left the building, the visitor count reaches zero and MCB output lines at the distribution board are automatically switched off.

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Accelerometer-Based Gesture-Controlled Robot (EFY May 2013)
Presented here is a gesture-controlled robot using AT89C52—one of the most basic microcontrollers. The robot can be moved in any direction just by making simple gestures, and the system’s sensitivity to gestures can be easily adjusted as per your liking. The LCD on the robot indicates the present status of the robot’s movement.

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EEPROM Interface for Beginners (EFY May 2013)
Electronic systems today incorporate a number of peripheral ICs that have to communicate with each other and the outside world. To maximise hardware efficiency and simplify circuit design, Philips developed a simple bidirectional two-wire communication interface between components residing on the same circuit board.

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Ethernet Interface for Automation Systems ((EFY May 2013)Communication with remotely located automation systems is possible via the Internet. A physical communication port with a network is required for this communication. An Ethernet interface can be used for that purpose. Presented here is the design and implementation of an Ethernet interface for automation systems, using a microcontroller. Ethernet is quite a complex interface, which was difficult to use with small microcontrollers having little memory—until Microchip came up with ENC28J60 Ethernet chip. It is a small chip with only 28 pins that can be used as an Ethernet network interface for any microcontroller equipped with serial peripheral interface (SPI). Therefore Microchip opens a whole new world of applications like the one we have implemented in this project where real-time readings of temperature and ambient light sensors placed at a remote place can be read using the Internet. The html page can be accessed from a remote location. Distance is no longer a limiting factor. Even Wi-Fi connectivity is possible because the devices can be connected to a wireless bridge too.
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Space Invaders Hand Video Game (EFY June 2013)
A video game is an electronic game that involves human interaction with a user interface to generate visual feedback on a video monitor. Electronic video games first appeared in the 1950s. In those days, video games were mostly hardwarebased, requiring the use of complex logics to generate graphics on the screen (usually a cathode ray tube device). They employed keypads or joysticks as input devices. Since then we have seen many improvements in video games due to rapid developments in electronics and computer industries. Currently, video games have high-definition graphics, gesture recognition inputs and many other features. Presented here is Space Invaders video game designed using ATmega16 microcontroller. Space Invaders is an arcade video game designed by Tomohiro Nishikado, released and sold in Japan in 1978. It was one of the forerunners of modern video gaming and helped expand the video game industry from a novelty to a global industry. This game used an Intel 8080 central processing unit as the main controller. In addition to Atmel’s ATmega16 microcontroller, this hand video game uses components like a 128×64 graphic LCD (GLCD) based on KS0108 controller and a keypad.
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Remote Sensing Thermometer (EFY JUNE 2013)
Ever since the invention of thermometer, various techniques have been developed and used to measure temperature of solid, liquid
and gaseous matters. But none of these techniques could measure the temperature from a remote place, which sometimes becomes a necessity, particularly when the object under test is in a dangerous or inaccessible area. Presented here is a remote sensing thermometer to measure the temperature from a remote place.
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RTC-based Event Logger (EFY JUNE 2013)
Event log data is a unique source of information for security, audit, compliance and troubleshooting purposes. An event logger enables you to view the log of a series of events. This can be done not only at the time of occurrence of the events but also any time later. The event logger provides an accurate time and date at which a particular event has occurred, which is essential for many applications. In this event logger article, we also demonstrate the use of a DS1307 realtime clock (RTC) chip, switches and an LCD module. The RTC chip provides time components of hours, minutes and seconds in addition to the year, month and day. In this project, pressing a switch is regarded as an event. When the event occurs, it is recorded in memory locations of the microcontroller. This information from the microcontroller can be retrieved and seen on the LCD module and HyperTerminal.

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Android-Powered Access Control Via Bluetooth (EFY JULY 2013)
Lately, there has been much talk of Android operating system, which is a touch-based interface for mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. Interfacing Android-powered devices using Bluetooth to control household appliances like fans, lights and ACs is becoming popular amongst students and hobbyists. Learning and playing with Android-based devices is not only interesting but useful as well. Presented here is a password-based access control system using your Android device. You can open a gate or door only when you send a valid password from your Android phone. If you are comfortable with programming a microcontroller, you can do it easily, provided you have a Bluetooth module. System requirements are Androidbased smartphone, Blutooth module, Freeduino board, electric strike lock YS 130, Arduino 1.0.2 and Bluetooth SPP.

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High-Power LED Stroboscope (EFY July 2013)
Stroboscope is a convenient and accurate enough instrument to measure speeds of rotating objects in homes or industries. One can use it to find the speed of fans, motors or any other rotating object. Stroboscope is nothing but a flashing light that can provide sharp light pulses at a variable rate. If a rotating object is observed in a powerful beam of pulsed light with frequency matching the rotations per second of the rotating object, the rotating object appears to be stationary. So the speed of any rotating object can be calculated by varying the pulse rate until the rotating object appears stationary. Once this state is achieved, revolutions per minute (rpm) of the rotating object will be equal to the pulse time.

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Propeller Message Display with Temperature Indicator (EFY July 2013)Here we describe a microcontroller-based propeller display that displays any message sent to it via hyper-terminal of a personal computer. Moreover, a tempera-ture sensing IC (TMP125) is mounted onto the propeller display to display temperature in real time. It gives a 360-degree view and displays several characters in a revolving circular path using just eight LEDs. It is a costeffective, attractive way of display that reduces the cost and complexity while making the whole system dynamic and energy-efficient. The main highlight of this project is a vertical facing display with true 360-degree viewing angle. The basic idea of this project comes from the concept of persistence of vision. This phenomenon is related to vision capability of the human eye, where an afterimage is thought to
persist for approximately 1/25th of a second. So if someone is observing images at a rate of 25 per second, they appear to form a continuous picture. In this display, the LED strip moves so fast that one is able to see a matrix of LEDs. The time of a single rotation is divided into several shorter time periods during which each individual LED is kept on/off to display different characters. Temperature sensed by the temperature IC is sent to the controller via SPI bus.

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Make your own USB Data acquisition System (EFY October 2013)
Presented here is a data acquisition (DAQ) system that can be used to interface six sensors and four digital-to-analogue channels. The acquired voltage levels can be displayed on a personal computer (PC). The DAQ device may be calibrated for precision and benchmarked with various standards, and delivered as an inexpensive USB DAQ product for hobbyists and students. Irrespective of our stream of engineering or science, most of us do programming and data analysis on computers due to ease in data handling, storage and manipulation. This project may be helpful for those who want to develop an integrated system that consists of a DAQ and other system circuitry in a single unit. It would provide a greater insight to the design and development of a USB DAQ system itself! The article includes details of circuit designs, software development for user-interface using C# and Lab- View, printed circuit board reader is familiar with basic ‘C’ programming and AVR programming styles. However, best efforts have been made to make the contents logical enough to help even a beginner understand the project and tweak with the codes.

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GPS Navigator (EFY October 2013)
Global positioning system (GPS) is a wonderful technology that has made navigation systems highly accurate and efficient in recent years. All the mobile phones these days come with an in-built GPS receiver through which you can easily find out your current location anywhere on the earth. The only thing required is an unobstructed line-of-sight to four or more GPS satellites. A GPS navigational device is any device that receives GPS signals and processes them to extract information for determining its exact location. Presented here is such a GPS device with a tracking record system. It shows the path traversed by you from the initial position, so you are never lost at unknown locations and can always come back to the initial point.

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Electronic Door Lock (EFY October 2013)
Home burglary incidents are on the rise. Homes without proper security measures in place are particularly more vulnerable. But, it is easy to avoid home break-ins by using a simple solution like the electronic door lock presented here. With this circuit installed, the entry door of your house can be unlocked only by entering a pre-decided password, which helps to prevent unauthorised unlocking. The circuit is very simple and can be assembled using readily available components.

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Environment Monitoring System using Arduino (EFY August 2013)
A comfortable environment can increase the productivity multi-folds. So it is important that the environment variables, such as temperature, relative humidity, dew point, light intensity and air quality (gas/smoke), are continuously monitored and corresponding systems adjusted to maintain a comfortable working environment. Presented here is an Arduino-based hand-held environment monitoring system that senses these parameters and shows on an LCD display. All the mentioned parameters are displayed in a cyclic manner.

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Variable Bench Power Supply With LCD and Monitor Display (EFY August 2013)Presented here is an economical and cost-effective yet efficient variable bench power supply that provides one variable and two fixed supply channels. It provides 1.2V to 25V supply with up to 5-ampere current through one channel, and 5V, 1A and 12V, 1A supplies through the other two channels. It also displays the voltage on the output terminals, and the current and instantaneous power drawn by the load on an on-board LCD display. You can connect this power supply to your computer via the serial port and see the voltage, current and power drawn by the load graphically. The project has two sections: the main power module having linear voltage regulators with rectification and filtering circuitry for supply generation and regulation, and the other having a microcontroller that is used to sense and display the current and voltage across the variable supply channel.

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Stop Clock with Battery backup (EFY August 2013)
Stop clock is widely used in various fields to measure the timing of events. Science laboratory experiments, such as measurement of discharge rate of capacitors with different resistors, acceleration due to gravity and velocity of an object, require an accurate stop clock. Also, in sports almost all the track events need such a clock to measure the timings. Presented here is a stop clock built with a basic AT89C52 microcontroller that can be used in a variety of fields to measure events. This construction project can also help you understand concepts like real-time use of microcontrollers and scanning related to displays. The device is dual powered and will switch to battery supply if mains is ‘off.’

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Arduino-Based Tilt Detector (EFY Sept 2013)
An accelerometer, which is an electromechanical device, can be used for various applications like tilt detection, obstacle detection, motion inputs, earthquake sensing, etc. Tilt detection is a simple application of an accelerometer where a change in angular position of the system in any direction is detected and indicated through four LEDs. An Arduino Uno board is used to process the data received from the accelerometer and switch on the corresponding LED to indicate the direction of tilt.

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Hybrid Solar Charger (EFY Sept 2013)
Efficiency of a solar charging system depends on the weather conditions. Usually the solar panel gets four to five hours of bright sunlight in a day. If the weather is cloudy or rainy, it affects the charging process and the battery does not attain full charge. This simple hybrid solar charger can solve the problem as it can charge the battery using both solar power as well as AC mains supply. When output from the solar panel is above 12 volts, the battery charges using the solar power. When the output drops below 12 volts, the battery charges through AC mains supply.

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Solar Compas with OLED display (EFY SEPT 2013)
The solar compass presented here is a navigational tool, which helps in finding directions through the position of sun in the sky as reference. This solar compass is not influenced by magnetism, unlike a regular magnetic compass. The position of sun in the sky depends on your location on Earth, the time of day and the time of year. Therefore complete modelling of the sun’s angle to a fixed position on Earth requires the latitude, longitude, day of the year and time of day. We can use this modelling to find the position of sun in the sky in terms of elevation and azimuth angles and find out true North through it. All these parameters are shown on an organic light emitting diode (OLED) module. It also shows the real date and time.

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Wi-Fi Embedded Webcam (EFY Sept 2013)This project is built around an MRF24WBOMA Wi-Fi module, a PIC microcontroller and a camera module using the TCP-IP protocol. The camera captures live video from a remote location, which is transmitted wirelessly through the Internet and can be viewed on a PC or laptop. The design uses easily-available low-cost components and a serial peripheral interface (SPI). Microchip’s recently introduced MRF24WBOMA is an inexpensive Wi-Fi chip that uses SPI communication.

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Home automation through Bluetooth (EFY November 2013)
Home Automation through Bluetooth’ is a microcontroller- based application that can control various devices at your home using bluetooth wireless technology. Bluetooth technology has become increasingly integrated into devices like cell phones, laptop computers and tablets, and its quick acceptance hasled many to explore the possibility of various other applications that can be controlled through Bluetooth-enabled devices. Here, the serial data transfer capability of Bluetooth technology is exploited to control devices either using your Android phone or Bluetooth enabled laptop computer.

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PC-Based Equipment Controller (EFY November 2013)
Presented here is a Windows based project that can control up to eight electrical devices using a personal computer. Connecting a computer to external devices is becoming essential in our day-to-day life for automation. But to communicate to a device we need a common communication protocol such as a serial COM port, USB or wireless connectivity. Here we have used the serial communication protocol to control the devices. Many modern personal computers have no serial COM ports but these are still found in industrial machines or scientific instruments. This project was inspired by the construction project, ‘Multiple Device Switching Through PC’s Parallel Port’ published in May 2008 issue of EFY. Parallel ports are not in use any more, nor are they available on PCs and laptops. So we have designed this project for the serial port, which is still being used for communication in some PCs.

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Simple 12V, 1A SMPS (EFY November 2013)
Most electronics enthusiasts require DC power supplies to operate various devices and accessories. The most popular and common supply is a 12V DC supply that can be easily derived from the household AC supply with transformation, rectification, filtering and stabilisation. These power supplies have a bulky steel- or iron-laminated transformer that provides a safety barrier for the low-voltage output from the AC input, and reduces the input from typically 230V AC to a much lower voltage. The low-voltage AC output from the transformer is then rectified by two or four diodes and smoothed into low-voltage DC by large electrolytic capacitors. A switched mode power supply (SMPS) offers the same end results at a lower cost and higher efficiency. For a given output power, an SMPS is lighter and smaller. This is because, if the frequency of operation is increased, one can get away with using a smaller core cross-sectional area. Besides, an iron-core transformer works only up to about 10 kHz, and if we need something in 50-100kHz range, we need a ferrite core.

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Android Phone-Controlled Robot (December 2013)
Android smartphones are undoubtedly the most popular gadgets these days. You will find various apps on the Internet that exploit inbuilt hardware in these mobile phones, such as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, to control other devices. Presented here is a robot that can be controlled using an app running on an Android phone. The control commands are sent via Bluetooth and the robot has such features as:
1. It can be controlled from Android smartphones by touch or voice commands
2. The speed of the robot can also be controlled
3. The robot will sense and inform to the phone its distance from the nearest obstacle
4. It will also send information
about the direction in which it is moving

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Calculator Using Postfix Notations (EFY December 2013)
Doing calculations in a microcontroller- based project is common. Such calculations done by the microcontroller are prewritten as a part of the code, which means that these formulae cannot be changed or altered even if a situation demands so. But what if your system has to solve equations on the fly? What if you want to define an equation to be evaluated and the microcontroller has to perform the task based on that? Presented here is a handy postfix notation system that can do your calculations in practically no time, and that too without changing the source code. It can even handle parenthesis and algebraic operator precedence. Instead of explaining just the postfix notation system, algorithm and overall method, let us build a basic calculator based on this technique using Atmel’s AVR microcontroller

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Digital temperature controller (EFY December 2013)
Digital temperature controller is an essential instrument in the field of electronics, instrumentation and control automation for measuring and controlling temperatures. It can be used as much at homes as in industrial applications. Different types of analogue and digital temperature controllers are readily available in the market, but they are generally not only expensive, their temperature range is also usually not very high. Presented here is a low-cost microcontroller-based temperature controller that can read and control temperatures in the range of zero to 1000ºC. Real-time temperature is displayed on its LCD screen, and you can use it to control the temperature within the preset minimum and maximum range.

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Raspberry Pi Controlling 8 Servo's (EFY DEC 2013)
A servo motor is a rotary actuator that allows precise controlof angular positions. It consists of a motor coupled to a sensor for position feedback, through a reduction gearbox. These motors are widely used in applications such as robotics, CNC machinery or automated manufacturing. Servos are controlled by sending an electrical pulse of variable width, or pulse width modulation (PWM)signals, through the control wire. Servo motors can usually only turn 90 degrees in either direction,totalling 180-degree movement. The motor’s neutral position is defined as the position where the servo has the same amount of potential rotation in both the clockwise and counter-Clockwise directions. Raspberry Pi has one PWM pin (GPIO 18 or physical pin 12), which can drive only one servo motor at a time with the help of wiring-pi. Presented here is a project with which you can drive up to eight servos together,using Servoblaster, which is a kernel level hardware tweaking program for Raspberry Pi.

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Soccer robot (EFY Jan 2014)
This soccer robot can move forward, reverse, forward, left, forward-right, reverse-left and reverse-right with the help of an Android phone. The speed of its movement is controlled by the angle of rotation of the phone. The robot also kicks a ball when the phone is shaken. The circuit is built around Arduino UNO board (BOARD1), servo motor (connected at CON5), Bluetooth module JY MCU BT, motor driver L293D (IC1) and two DC motors (M1 and M2). The circuit uses two 9V batteries; one for the Arduino board (BOARD1) and the other for DC motors. The 5V regulated supply for rest of the circuit is provided by Arduino board itself. LED on BOARD1 indicates the presence of power supply.

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Arduino Based Gauss meter (EFY Jan 2014)
Presented here is a handheld device that can be used to measure magnetic field using a Hall effect-based sensor. The device can be used in the physics lab for conducting various experiments on magnetism. Moreover, some upgradations can be made to develop new and advanced devices. The device shows magnetic field in CGS (centimetre-gram-second system) unit, Guass and is updated every 250 milliseconds on the LCD screen.
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Weather Logger (EFY Jan 2014)
Presented here is a personal weather logger whose various transducers are used to log weather data such as humidity, atmospheric pressure and temperature. The data is transferred to PC where it is displayed as a graph for analysis. The weather logger has the following features:
1. Measures and displays real-time value of humidity, pressure and temperature on the LCD
2. Saves data for 35 hours with sampling interval of 30 minutes in the microcontroller.
3. Shows clock/calendar function
4. Has USB connectivity for data transfer to PC
5. Stores data in a PC for future analysis
6. Displays a graph in the PC
7. Sets clock and reference pressure using switches

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Colour-Sensing Robot with MATLAB (EFY February 2014)
A camera is one of the most powerful and accurate sensors if you know how to process the images taken by it for the information you want. You can process subsequent images and extract a variety of information using image-processing echniques. MATLAB is a very powerful tool and plays an important role in image processing. Image processing is converting an image into digital form and performing some mathematical operations on it, in order to get an enhanced image or to extract some useful information out of it. Most image-processing techniques involve treating the image as a two-dimensional signal and applying standard signal-processing techniques to it. Presented here is a MATLABbased project where images taken by the camera are processed for colours and the position of a red-coloured object is extracted A camera is one of the most powerful and accurate sensors if you know how to process the images taken by it for the information you want. You can process subsequent images and extract a variety of out of the image. Based on the position of the red coloured object in the image, different data are sent via COM port. The serial data are received by the robot and corresponding movement is done. You can change the code for any colour that you find suitable. This project is just an example and you can use this for various industrial applications such as controlling heavy load-lifting machines with some object of a specific colour in your hand.

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Web-Based Water-Level Monitor and Pump Controller
Several articles about water-level controllers for overhead tanks have been published in earlier issues of EFY magazine. But the project we are going to share today is new and unique. So presented here is a Web-based water-level monitor and motor-pump controller using
ATmega128 microcontroller, Ethernet controller ENC28J60 and TCP-IP protocol. The design involves the use of port-forwarding facility of broadband modem or router. By using this facility, one can port forward a local IP address to a public IP address with which controlling appliances from any part of the world through the Web becomes possible. Five water-level sensors are used to monitor the water levels in the overhead tank via Web browser. Circuit and working The circuit diagram of the Web-based water-level monitor and pump controller

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Energy meter (EFY February 2014)
Electromechanical energy meters have been the standard for metering the electricity since billing began. But these are now being gradually replaced by electronic digital energy meters. Presented here is a simple energy meter using Analog Device’s ADE7757 chip for single-phase, 2-wire (phase and neutral) systems used in households. IC ADE7757 is a low-cost, single-phase solution for electrical energy measurement. You can use this solution even for individual appliances to see how much energy they are consuming.

Its salient features are:
1. Can read up to 999999 units (kWh) with a resolution of 0.01 units
2. Designed for normal 230V AC and maximum line current of 30 amps
3. The meter count is 100 pulses/ kWh, i.e., 100 pulses will be required to register one unit

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Thermoelectric Refrigerator (EFY March 2014)
As summers are approaching, everyone would need a refrigerator. In many cases, people cannot afford a regular-size refrigerator. Especially students staying in a hostel can neither afford it nor would like to carry such a big appliance along with them when they leave. Also, these refrigerators consume power to the tune of 500W, which is not allowed in most hostels. Presented here is a thermoelectric refrigerator that can be built with easily available off-the-shelf components for approximately ` 1200. The refrigerator
consumes only around 60W of power. There is also a control system in the refrigerator that monitors and controls the temperature. The overall size is small, so it can be kept quite comfortably in a small hostel room.

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Real-Time Clock with Temperature Logger (EFY March 2014)
Presented here is a simple realtime clock with temperature logger. The project shows time, date and real-time temperature on the LCD. The logger records the maximum and minimum temperature for each day and can keep entries for 51 days. The recorded temperatures can be viewed any time together with the dates. The temperature is sensed via single-wire temperature sensor and the maximum and
minimum temperatures for each day are stored in EEPROM via I2C protocol.

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Safety Timer for Home Appliances (EFY March 2014)
When power requirement in certain areas increases, it tends to put an extra burden on the power station distributing power, which can lead to over and under voltage issues within those areas. This situation of over and under voltages is not good for home appliances such as TV, refrigerator, computer and water motor as all of them should run only within a safe range of input voltage to ensure their long life and functionality. This project not only ensures under and over voltage cutoff, but also displays the mains voltage over LCD. The device is equipped with a delay timer which allows it to re-start only after a period of time elapses. This ensures safety for conditions when the voltage drops or rises very rapidly and can harm sensitive appliances. re-start time is selectable from 30 seconds to a maximum of 4 minutes. The under and over voltage cut-off limits are programmable and the user can change them according to the load voltage endurance. When the mains input voltage leaves the safe operating area, the output load is immediately turned off and the user is warned through audio-visual indication. The device works satisfactorily from 100V to 300V. The unit is also equipped with a temperature sensor that senses the room temperature, which is displayed on the LCD.

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Solar-Powered Home Lighting System (EFY April 2014)
This project suggests a system that uses solar power and LED lighting technology in a more efficient way. Solar power systems use solar panels to convert the sun’s energy directly to electricity. This electricity is stored in the batteries that can supply only DC output. All available lighting systems, including LED lights, work on AC power. So the DC supply needs to be converted to AC using inverters, which causes some loss of power. The amount of power lost during this process depends on the efficiency of the inverter. But, if we look closely, in most of the LED lighting systems, the AC is converted back to DC using switched-mode power supplies (SMPS) having an efficiency of around 80 per cent. This system proposes to use the power from the battery directly for LED lighting, eliminating the need for DC-to- AC conversion by the inverter and AC-to-DC conversion by the LED light’s SMPS supply.

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Arduino-Controlled Namaste Greeting Robot (EFY April 2014)
The concept of controlling various servo motors through Arduino Uno board is introduced here with a fun project called ‘namaste robot.’ The robot turns its head by 180° and scans people in its range using an ultrasonic module. If it finds anyone nearby, it greets the person with ‘namaste’ with both hands pressing to- gether, which is the traditional Indian way of wishing people. The robot can be used in offices, shopping centres, parks and party halls where it can greet and attract people. Fig. 1 shows the author’s prototype of this robot. Please note that the ultrasonic module is mounted on the chest in author’s prototype, but during testing it was observed that if it is mounted on the eyes, it can scan a much larger area in its vicinity.

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RF-Controlled Aircraft (EFY May 2014)
Presented here is a remote-controlled aircraft project based on Arduino and 433MHz RF modules controlling a brushless DC motor and three servo motors. It comprises an Arduino-based remote control at the transmitter’s end and an Arduinobased aircraft at the receiver’s end. The aim of this project is to develop a 4-channel wireless control system. Controlling multiple servo motors using XBee RF modules is very sophisticated and robust but a bit costlier. For cheaper solution, we used a pair of simple 433MHz RF transmitter and receiver modules.

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Programmable Interval Timer for Live Shows (EFY May 2014)
Presented here is a microcontroller-based special-purpose programmable interval timer for live shows and competitions to record time while the contestants are performing. The main objective of this project is to design an accurate programmable interval timer that can be utilised in inter-college/inter-zonal/inter-university shows and competitions. In live competitions and shows, each item has a predetermined fixed minimum time, maximum time and grace time. The item being presented should complete between minimum and maximum time. Sometimes, grace time for a few seconds over and above the maximum time is allowed. If it is not completed within the stipulated timeframe, the item presented by that particular team is disqualified. One may use a stopwatch to monitor the competition but there are chances of inaccuracy or introduction of errors while switching on the stopwatch in the beginning or switching off at the end of a particular item. The audience or the participants can object or raise a complaint for inaccuracy in time allotment. This project comes handy to overcome these problems. It is fully automatic and programmable. It has the flexibility to program the minimum, maximum and grace time period in the database as explained in the software section.

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Car-Reversing Audio-Visual Alarm (EFY June 2014)
Here is a simple car-parking alarm circuit based on an AVR microcontroller and an ultrasonic module. The circuit will alert you while you are reversing your car for parking, if there is any obstacle, through an audio-visual alarm. The heart of the system is the 28-pin Atmel’s ATmega328, which is an 8-bit AVR microcontroller with 32kB Flash and 1024 bytes of data RAM. It has two 8-bit timers/counters, one 16-bit timer/counter, six PWM channels, 23 programmable I/O lines, programmable serial USART master/ slave SPI serial interface, a 6-channel 10-bit ADC and on-chip analogue comparator.

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Power Factor Corrector (EFY June 2014)
This project discusses the need for power factor correction and provides a suitable DIY solution that could be used for small-scale industries and establishments. When voltage and current are in phase with each other in an AC circuit, the electrical energy drawn from the source gets fully converted into another form of energy and the power factor (cosine of angle between voltage and current waveform) is said to be unity (or 100 per cent). This happens with purely resistive loads. With inductive loads, the voltage and current do not remain in phase and the power factor drops. As the power factor drops, the system becomes less efficient. A drop from unity to 0.9 (90 per cent) in the power factor results in 15 per cent more current requirement for the same load. A power factor of 0.7 (70 per cent) requires approximately 43 per cent more current. In industrial units and establishments, most of the loads are electrical motors and air-conditioning units. These loads are inductive in nature, where the current lags the applied voltage and the power factor is termed as lagging power factor. With capacitive loads, the current leads the voltage and the power factor is termed as leading power factor. The objective therefore should be to neutralise the lagging power factor of inductive loads by connecting capacitors across the load, which have leading power factor.

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Web-Based Device Controller With Arduino Board (EFY July 2014)
Arduino board can also be used to control electrical devices and appliances over the Internet. Just by clicking a few buttons on a webpage, the devices can be operated from a remote location. For this the board needs to be Ethernet-enabled using Ethernet shield. This project illustrates the point by using Wiznet W5100 Ethernet shield to control a servo motor and an LED. The circuit is built around Arduino UNO board (board1), Arduino Ethernet shield (shield1) and servo motor.

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Arduino-Based FM Receiver (EFY July 2014)
This project is of an FM radio based on Philips TEA5767 digital radio-receiver module. The radio receiver uses I2C interface with Arduino UNO development board. The TEA5767 module offers such features as stereo or mono outputs, radio station scanning and signal strength indication.

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Quiz Game Controller (EFY July 2014)
This PIC16F877A microcontroller-based quiz controller, designed for up to six players or teams, is suitable for school and college quiz competitions. It is similar to a fastest-finger-first system in which the player who presses the button first gets the first chance to answer the quiz. Here, each team is assigned a unique number and provided with a pushbutton switch. As soon as a question is asked by the quiz master, any of the participating teams can press the button and give the answer within the allotted time. A buzzer sounds and a big 12.7cm (5-inch) 7-segment display shows the number of the team that presses their pushbutton switch first.

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Mini Rechargeable Power Supply (EFY August 2014)
Presented here is a robust, compact and hand-held power supply that delivers 9.2V and 5V up to 1A (approx.) and 3.3V up to 500mA. It also includes female A-type USB connector so you can power and charge other equipment such as mobile phones. Four white LEDs are included to enable its use as a torch-light as well. The circuit uses a single rechargeable 3.7V Li-ion battery pack (normally used in mobile phones and MP3 players). It uses dedicated Li-ion charging IC which monitors undercharge and overcharge conditions to safely charge the Li-ion battery pack. The circuit not only indicates the charging status but also shuts off the load when the battery is discharged to a certain level. The power supply is so versatile that it accepts input from various power sources like DC wall adaptors, USB or a solar panel to charge the 3.7V battery. Even if the battery is fully discharged, it can power the load from external power source without disturbing the output regulation and charging of the battery.

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Sequential Tilt-Motion Lock (EFY August 2014)
Here is a project for locking and unlocking with a tilt sensor by tilting it in a defined sequence. It uses an accelerometer module to detect the tilt motion. If the sequence matches with the predefined motion sequence, the lock opens. You can build this lock for a briefcase, ballot box, portable cashbox or even as a door-lock using suitable mechanical arrangement. The circuit is built around Arduino Uno board (Board1), accelerometer module
(ACC.1), solenoid lock/electric strike and a few other components.

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Celestial Weight Calculator (EFY Sept 2014)
Whether you are a science fiction fan, a space enthusiast or one of the millions who have watched astronauts gamboling about the moon’s surface,
you may have wondered how much you would weigh on other planets in the solar system. The weight depends on the gravitational forces acting on the object, which vary from planet to planet. The Newton’s law of universal gravitation says that everything that has mass attracts every other thing that has mass, pulling with a force which is directly proportional to the product of the two masses of the objects and inversely proportional to the square of the distance separating their centres. The designed embedded system takes a weight on earth and shows the weights on other celestial bodies of our solar system. The device is designed and constructed using microcontroller AT89S52. It can give better understanding about gravity. The system calculates the mass and acceleration due to gravity (g) for other celestial bodies and displays the corresponding weight (force).

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XBee-Controlled Aircraft (EFY September 2014)
This is a remote-controlled aircraft project based on Arduino and XBee modules. The aircraft’s movement is controlled through a brushless DC motor and three servo motors. It has an XBee-based remote control at the transmitter end and an Arduino-based aircraft at the receiver end. The aim of his project is to develop a 4-channel wireless remote control (RC) system with one XBee each in transmitter and receiver. Transmitter section is driven by a 3.7V battery and receiver section by an 11.1V LiPo battery. 11.1V is used to power the brushless DC motor (or BLDC motor) through ESC module. The Arduino board1 receives power supply from 11.1V battery at its Vin input pin. The four potentiometers in transmitter section are used for sending different control signals to the receiver section through RF modules. Control signals received in the receiver are processed by microcontroller in the Arduino, which in turn controls a BLDC motor and the servo motors for rudder, aileron and elevator of the aircraft.

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Weather-Forecast Monitoring System (October 2014)
Weather forecasts play an important role in our day to- day life. A good weather monitoring system helps in better planning and any preparations that may be required in case of adverse weather. This project deals with the construction of a weather display system using low-cost components so that any electronics hobbyist can build it. Instead of using sensors to gather the weather data, the project gets the information from professional weather stations located around the world through an international weather data provider.

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RFID Based Access Control Using Arduino (October 2014)
Radio frequency identification (RFID) is used in many applications. Here, we present an access control system based on EM-18 RFID reader module and Arduino UNO board. RFID is a non-contact, automatic identification technology that uses radio signals to identify, track, sort and detect a variety of objects including people, vehicles, goods and assets without the need for direct contact or line-of-sight contact (as found necessary in bar code technology). RFID technology can track movement of objects through a network of radio-enabled scanning devices over a distance of several metres. A device called RFID tag, or simply a tag, is a key component of the technology.

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Automated Plants Watering System (EFY November 2014)
During summers, most people are too lazy to water the potted plants on their rooftop gardens every day. Explained in this section is a simple and exciting plant watering system that you can build yourself in just a few hours. It is an Arduino based automatic plant waterfeeder system that uses a soil moisture sensor. The circuit comprises an Arduino UNO board, a soil moisture sensor, a servo motor, a 12V water pump and an L293D (IC1) motor driver IC to run the water pump. You can power the Arduino board using a 7V to 12V wall wart or plugin adaptor or solar panel. You need a separate 12V battery or power supply or solar panel for the pump motor.

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LED Scrolling Display (EFY November 2014)
Most outdoor LED displays and some indoor LED displays are built around individually- mounted LEDs. A cluster of red, green and blue diodes is driven together to form a full-colour display. In a dot-matrix LED display, the LEDs are wired together in rows and columns to minimise the number of pins required to drive them. For example, an 8×8 matrix of LEDs, shown in Fig. 1, would need 64 I/O pins—one for each LED pixel. By wiring all nodes together in rows (R1 through R8) and cathodes in columns (C1 through C8), the required number of I/O pins is reduced to 16. Each LED is addressed by its row and column number. In Fig. 1, if R4 is pulled high and C3 is pulled low, the LED in the fourth row and third Most outdoor LED displays and some indoor LED displays are built around individually- mounted LEDs. A cluster of red, green and blue diodes is driven together to form a full-colour display. In a dot-matrix LED display, the LEDs are wired together in rows and columns to minimise the number of column will turn on. Alphabets and numerals can be displayed by fast scanning of either rows or columns. In this project, column scanning has been used.

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PLL FM transmitter (EFY December 2014)
This is a circuit that offers a challenge to electronics enthusiasts and hobbyists—an FM transmitter that uses readily available components and covers the FM broadcast band in 100kHz steps. The frequency drift is controlled by phase-locked-loop (PLL) method, making transmission frequency rock-solid all the time, just like commercial stations. Using DIP switches, simply punch in the frequency on which you wish to broadcast, and you are on the air.

First it was Rapidshare and now it is filecloud which ateup all my collection. 4shared is still supporting free storage and thus here onwards all links of my collection will be limited 4shared only.

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Long delay timer with real time clock display (EFY December 2014)
Often we forget to switch-off the water pump on time and it results in overflow of water from the overhead tank. Fortunately, there are many solutions vailable for switching-off the motorautomatically. Most water-level controllers require a level monitoring system for the tank, which is not so easy to install due to complicated electrical connections. One of the simplest alternatives is a countdown timer circuit described here. This circuit shows the realtime clock in hours, minutes and seconds, with AM/ PM on LCD display. It eliminates the use of additional peripherals like DS1307 RTC and I2C bus programming. Thus, cost of the circuit is reduced significantly as compared to other real-time clock circuits.

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Wireless Gesture-Controlled Robot (EFY January 2015)
In this project we are going to control a robot wirelessly using hand gestures. This is an easy, userfriendly way to interact with robotic systems and robots. An accelerometer is used to detect the tilting position of your hand, and a microcontroller gets different analogue values and generates command signals to control the robot. This concept can be implemented in a robotic arm used for welding or handling hazardous materials, such as in nuclear plants.

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Ultrasonic Radar Model Using Microcontroller ATmega128 (EFY February 2015)
Radar systems have a number of defence as well as civil applications. Air traffic control uses radars to track aircrafts on the ground and in the air, and to guide planes for smooth landings. Police use radars to detect the speed of passing vehicles. Geologists use radars to map the Earth and other planets. Military uses these for surveillance. Meteorologists use radars to track storms, hurricanes and tornadoes. The list is endless. A radar system consists of a transmitter that transmits a beam towards the target, which is then reflected by the target as an echo signal. The reflected signal is received by a receiver. This receiver processes the received signal and provides such information as the presence of a target, distance, position (moving or stationary) or speed, which is displayed on a display unit.

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Mini offline UPS (EFY March 2015)
Most of the systems are powered by AC mains. Uninterrupted power supply systems (UPSes) are there as a back-up to power the systems when mains supply is interrupted due to a power cut. A UPS differs from a standby generator in that it will provide near-instantaneous power by supplying the energy stored in batteries. In an online UPS, batteries are always connected to the inverter, which is always on, so that no transfer switches are necessary when power disruption occurs. In an offline UPS, the inverter circuit is switched on when mains are not there. UPSes are available off-theshelf, and one can select the system as per one’s requirement, back-up time being one requirement. However, one can construct a UPS of one’s own choice. Here is a circuit of an offline UPS, which a hobbyist can make at a reasonable cost. The capacity of the UPS is 350VA, so it can be used for any equipment with a load below 350VA. The UPS can be upgraded to 1kVA by making just a few changes.

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Wireless hotel ordering system (EFY April 2015)
Traditional ordering systems consist of waiters handing over the menu to customers and taking orders from them. The waiter's performance is defined by the speed at which the order gets processed, and it might get delayed at times. In the wireless ordering system, there is no waiter to take the order. Everything related to the waiter is done by the microcontroller (MCU) and a wireless transmitter. The customer can start ordering as soon as he or she is seated comfortably at the table. The delay caused by the waiter is eliminated in this system.

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Fire Extinguishing Robot (EFY May 2015)
Fire is like a double-edged sword. Discovery of fire stands as a milestone in the history of mankind. Fire fighters try their best to fight and extinguish fires when in need. But at the household level, it is observed that if the fire can be extinguished at an early stage, many major accidents can be averted. The aim here is to build a robot that can detect and extinguish fire.

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Home Automation System (EFY May 2015)
In this era of digital revolution, we are surrounded by smart devices that are capable of making decisions on their own without much human intervention. Our home can also be made smart by implementing a real-time home automation system that monitors parameters like power consumption and human presence. Home automation may include centralised control of electrical devices including lightings, appliances andsecurity. Presented here is a touch-control based home automation system that can control up to six electrical devices. It also has a separate keyboard interface module for troubleshooting and system settings. This system consists of closely-networked Atmel’s ATmega8, which is an AVR based microcontroller with 512 bytes EEPROM on a 28-pin DIP package, 1024 bytes internal SRAM and 8kB internal flash memory. The complete system is assembled in a small, portable central processing unit (CPU) chassis for an aesthetic look and uninterrupted 24x7 usage.

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GPS Master-Slave Clocks With RF Link (EFY june 2015)
We see public clocks displayed at many locations like office buildings, conference halls, control rooms and so on. Many are just independent clocks displaying Indian Standard Time (IST). The problem is that all the clocks show a slightly different time, none of which may be accurate. Master-slave clocks that are used for tripping analysis are good but are not GPS clocks, whereas GPS clocks are used only in switchyards and other sensitive locations where precise timing is required. Therefore to get precise time, you either have to rely on the time shown on your Internet-enabled mobile.

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Solar emergency light (EFY June 2015)
Solar-powered lights are a popular alternative to electric-powered lights. The solar emergency lamp described here has 60 white LEDs. It is powered
either by solar power or AC mains or 12V, SMF battery; under normal operation, the lamp is powered by the battery. When the battery voltage drops to 10.5V, the battery-charge-controller circuit goes into operation. Selection between a solar panel and AC mains for charging is done with the help of solid-state relays. If both sources are connected, the system selects solar power over AC mains for charging the battery.

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Arduino based gesture controlled robot (EFY July 2015)
Presented here is an Arduino based gesture-controlled robot, which is controlled through an accelerometer module using wireless radio frequency (RF) communication. In this project, we have used two Arduino UNO boards, one at the transmitter side and the other at the receiver side. The transmitter circuit is attached to the hand and the receiver Presented here is an Arduino based gesture-controlled robot, which is controlled through an accelerometer module using wireless radio frequency (RF) communication. circuit is attached to mechanical chassis of the robot. Hand gestures can control the robot using an accelerometer such as ADXL345 module. By changing the axis of ADXL345, we get corresponding changes in X-axis, Y-axis and Z-axis coordinates. These are sent to Arduino Board2 and, accordingly, control command to the robot is sent through the RF transmitter module wirelessly. These transmitted signals are received at the receiver end through an RF receiver module and transferred to Arduino Board 1 at the receiving end, which then drives L293D IC to rotate the motors for robotic movement.

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Door Lock using Arduino (EFY July 2015)
Presented here is an electronic locking system in which Arduino Nano plays the role of the processing unit. This circuit allows activation of an electronic door lock only on entering the correct password. It uses Arduino Nano to provide a keypad interface door lock for the front door. It is a keyless system where you can use your own personal code to enter your home with just a few simple pushes of some buttons. The keypad lock functions by entering a secret code, which is user-programmable.

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Design your own Remote control (EFY March 2007)
Most of the home appliances like TV sets, stereo systems, CD/DVD layers/recorders, air-conditioners, microwave ovens, multimedia computers and
set-top boxes come with an IR remote control. An infrared remote offers severaladvantages:
1. It is a cost-effective signaling system.
2. Unlike radio-frequency-based control devices, it is not subject to any
stringent regulation and restriction.
3. It is a line-of-sight system with a range of 5 to 10 metres, hence its
radiation stays confined to a single room in which it is used. It thus prevents interference between units operating in different rooms even when
using identical device address and command code.
4. A relatively broad modulation frequency range is available using inexpensive ASICs and components.
5. It is generally insensitive to interference from external electrical or magnetic fields.
6. It offers relatively high energy efficiency, which enhances the battery life.
7. Infrared emitters and detectors are inexpensive and readily available.

Limitations are:
1. Line-of-sight propagation becomes a limitation when you need to control a device from another room.
2. Infrared is subject to mutual interference from multiple sources in the same room as most consumer IR transmissions use a wavelength of either
880 or 940 nm (corresponding to the two commonly available IR-emitting LED types). This limitation can be tackled by using different sub-carrier
frequencies to modulate the light signals coupled with different encoding schemes to carry the data content.
3. Although largely immune to electrical or magnetic interference, the infrared signal is some what subject to interference from sunlight and other
infrared sources as also fluorescent lights.

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AVR Based Programmable object counter (EFY August 2015)
Object counters are used for applications like counting the number of visitors at super markets and other public places, the number of objects passing through a particular area or into a tray or container in manufacturing industries, the number of tablets filled in a bottle or a wrapper in the pharmaceutical industry and counting and limiting the number of people entering elevators or halls, among others. The project presented here demonstrates the working of an object counter suitable for industrial applications for counting up to 9999 objects. It is an AVR microcontroller (MCU) based full-featured programmable counter. In manufacturing industries, before the final product is ready, the product passes through a number of different stages of the manufacturing process. Normally, the operator enters the number of objects to be counted from the monitoring console, followed by pressing Start. The products moving on a conveyor belt are counted by the programmable object counter. The conveyor belt automatically stops when the number of counts entered by the operator is reached. Main features of this programmable object counter are simple user interface (UI) using only four pushbuttons, an LCD display for the UI, LEDs for simple visual indications, a buzzer for audio indication, counting of objects from 0 to 9999 and user-selectable counting up or counting down options.

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Bed-Vacancy Alarm System (EFY Sept 2015)
This inexpensive, compact bedvacancy alarm system raises an audible alarm whenever a patient or a small kid sleeping on the bed leaves the bed. The circuit comprises a bed sensor, an alarm box and a power supply with an optional battery-backup facility. The bed sensor can be placed under the hip of the care receiver on the mattress. The alarm box can be hooked onto a headboard or nightstand. The highly-sensitive sensor used is nothing but a force sensing resistor (FSR). The FSR is a polymer thickfilm (PTF) device whose resistance decreases with an increase in the force applied to its active surface. It is not a strain gauge, load cell or pressure transducer. While FSR can be used for dynamic measurement, only qualitative results are generally obtainable. Usually an FSR can sense applied force anywhere in the range of 100gm to 10kg; when no pressure is applied, its resistance is larger than 100k ohms.

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Thermocouple Tutorial with Arduino Interfacing (EFY Sept 2015)
Here is a simple project for interfacing a thermocouple with Arduino board. In high temperature process-control applications, some Ics and sensors fail to operate at certain high temperature levels. So a simple, rugged and linear thermocouple can be used to prevent that. A thermocouple is made by fusing the tips of two dissimilar metals. It works on the principle of Seebeck Effect, which states that when one end of a pair of two dissimilar metals
is heated, a potential difference forms at their other end, which is directly proportional to the temperature difference of the two ends.

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Assistive Device for the Speech Impaired (EFY Oct 2015)
Speech-impaired people have difficulty in communicating with normal people because the hand gestures used by them to communicate their information is not easily understandable; only trained people can understand these. Most expressions and emotions remain un-conveyed, sometimes even misinterpreted. So hand gestures (limited gestures) are not an effective method of communication for the speech impaired people. To take care of this issue, an assistive device can be used to enhance the passage of communication. Here, the assistive device consists of a specialized keypad in which each key corresponds to a preassigned recorded audio that can be played to convey the message by the speech-impaired person.

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Sonar Water-Level Meter (EFY Oct 2015)
Three-fourths of the earth is water, out of which 97 per cent is saline (in oceans, seas and groundwater). The remaining 2.5 per cent to 2.75 per cent is fresh water, out of which 1.75 per cent to two per cent is frozen in glaciers, ice and snow. Fresh groundwater and soil moisture constitutes only 0.7 per cent to 0.8 per cent. Less than 0.01 per cent, available as surface water in lakes, swamps and rivers, is available to us as drinking water. It is therefore imperative that systems are in place for managing this precious and scarce resource. Water-level indicators for waterstorage tanks are mostly mechanical contraptions. Steel wires, pulleys and rails get rusted as these are in continuous contact with water and air, resulting in unreliable operation. Contactless sonar-level metres are there but their high cost is a deterrent. In this article, a sonar contactless, wireless water-level indicator, which can be fabricated for less than ` 2500, has been described. It is capable of measuring water levels up to four metres with an accuracy of less than 5mm.

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Android Based Invisible Broken-Wire-Detection Robot (EFY Nov 2015)
Arduino UNO board. Arduino is an open source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It is intended for artists, designers, hobbyists and anyone who may be interested in creating interactive objects or environments. Arduino UNO is a board based on
ATmega328 microcontroller (MCU). It has 14 digital input/output pins, six analogue inputs, a USB connection Electrical conductors for distribution
are carried on overhead pole lines or buried underground. It is easy to identify broken electrical wires on overhead lines but not so in underground wires or household wirings concealed in the walls or breakage inside their insulation cover. Here is a robot that can detect invisible broken electrical
wires in 1-core, 2-core and 3-core cables without physically disturbing these.

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ATmega16A Based GPS Receiver (EFY Nov 2015)
A global positioning system (GPS) receiver is used to get precise geographical location by receiving information from satellites. It not only gives information about location but also information like time, date, height and speed. It is so useful that most smartphones are embedded with it. GPS receivers have many applications in aircraft, ships, sea vessels and the like for navigation purposes. Smartphones with maps (like Google Maps) find routes to a specific destination such as a restaurant, hospital or hotel. With the help of a GPS, a target camp can be located and a missile launched to destroy it.

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Joystick Based Stepper Motor Angle Controller Using AVR MCU (EFY Dec 2015)
A stepper motor is associated with parameters like speed, direction, number of revolutions and angle of rotation. There are different types of stepper motor controllers designed to control required parameters as per specific applications. Here is a project for controlling a stepper motor’s angle of rotation up to 360 degrees. Controlling the angle of rotations of stepper motors finds many applications including the following: Satellite dish antenna positioning. A satellite dish antenna should be in alignment with the satellite in space to receive signal at maximum strength. Therefore it is important to position the dish antenna at required angle. Aileron, elevator and rudder positioning in aircraft: In aircraft, it is required to position the aileron, elevator and rudder at desired angles to increase or decrease lift, change direction and increase or decrease speed. Rudder positioning on ship. To move the ship in a specific direction, it is important to set the angle of the rudder located in front of the propeller. Tank guns or howitzers positioning: For hitting the bulls-eye (target), the tank gun (or howitzer) must be positioned at a specific angle. One way to control the stepper motor’s angle of rotation is by using a joystick. You can turn the joystick shaft at a specific angle to rotate the motor at the desired angle and, at the same time, setting of the angle of rotation can be displayed on the LCD screen. As the joystick shaft is turned right or left, the motor immediately follows the joystick and rotates in the same direction by same angle.

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Earthquake indicator using Arduino (EFY Jan 2016)
An earthquake is an unavoidable and unpredictable natural phenomenon that often causes damage to lives and property. We cannot fight it but we can stay alert and aware using technology that can protect us and the industry. Here a simple earth quake indicator for home and industry using an Arduino and a highly-sensitive ADXL335. An accelerometer can indicate vibrations. This project can be modified and used as a knock-and-shake detector for ATMs, vehicles or door-break alarms. But its main aim is to detect earthquakes and other seismic activities.

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DIGITAL IC TESTER With Embedded Truth Table (EFY January 2106)
Different ICs come with different specifications. Thus, it becomes imperative to apply different hardware configurations and feed all possible inputs for checking different ICs. We need some easy and useful techniques to check the functionality of different kinds of ICs. This article represents a prototype IC tester that is highly capable, highly reliable as well as cost-effective. Here, we develop a program with different functions for checking different ICs. We systematically analyse and test the prototype for several ICs, accessing each individual pin with all possible inputs. We also investigate truth tables associated with different ICs over a display channel.

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Fridge Temp and Humidity indicator (EFY Feb 2016)
We can measure temperature and humidity inside the fridge using a normal temperature-humidity indicator but relative humidity (RH) could be inaccurate in that case. The moment the fridge door is opened, RH will shoot up due to ingress or egress of moisture in the surroundings. The small sniffer device, described in this article, picks up temperature and humidity from inside the fridge and transmits on an RF link to a nearby receiver unit. The receiver unit checks the received code, identifies the right sniffer device and displays live temperature and humidity.

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Multi mode Audio Amplifier (EFY March 2016)
Sometimes we need configurable multichannel amplifiers for experiments or for use in offices or schools. Here is a circuit based on TDA1554Q, configured for multi-mode function with four channel outputs. The circuit of the simple 4-channel multi-mode audio amplifier is shown. It has four channels and each channel can provide around 11W over a load of 2-ohms and around 6W over a load of 4-ohms. The circuit will also work with loads of 4-ohms to 16-ohms.

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PIR based Power Saver (EFY March 2016)
Quite often you forget to switch off the light or fan when going out of the room. The simple circuit presented here will automatically switch off electrical appliances like lights or fans as you vacate a room, after a predetermined time period. It will also switch on the light when you enter the room again. This will reduce unnecessary power consumption. PIR motion sensor used in the circuit.

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Wifi temperature logging system (EFY March 2016)
Here is a temperature data logging system based on PIC16F887 microcontroller (MCU), Wi-Fi and ThingSpeak application programming interface (API). Thing Speak is an open source Internet of Things (IoT) application and API to store and retrieve data from things over the Internet. It enables you to collect, store, analyse, visualize and act on the data received from sensors or electronic circuits.

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Clock cum temperature indicator (EFY April 2016)
Although many circuits for digital clocks have been published in Electronics For You, this circuit is a PIC microcontroller (MCU) based easy-to construct gadget, which combines a clock with a temperature indicator in the same display. The display uses four 7-segment common anode LEDs. It shows the clock, and in every minute for five seconds the display alternates to show the temperature in o C. An alarm facility with buzzer is provided. Clock’s precision is due to the 20MHz high-frequency crystal that is used with PIC16F73 chip.

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Wireless web server (EFY April 2016)
The project is based on low cost ESP8266 Wi-Fi module. Currently, ESP8266 is gaining popularity in the field of electronics because it is low-cost, reliable and easily available in the market. Most documents related to this module are in Mandarin (Chinese language) and information provided in the data sheet is not sufficient enough for using ESP8266 for an application. In order to fill the gap, people from various countries have formed an ESP8266 community forum, which gives necessary details about programming and other related is sues concerning this module.

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Child Monitoring circuit. ( EFY May 2016)
This small circuit, in two parts, helps in ensuring that a child does not get lost in a crowd during big festivals. It includes a transmitter and a receiver. The transmitter is attached to the small child and the receiver remains with the parents or the guardian accompanying the child. During operation, if the child moves away beyond the set range, the receiver starts vibrating to alert the parents.

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Driving a Wireless robotic Car (EFY May 2016)
Presented here is an Arduino and AT89C2051 micro controller (MCU) based robot. The robot is controlled using infrared (IR) sensors and wireless radio frequency (RF) communication. In this project we use four pairs of IR sensor modules (IR LED and photo diode) to control forward, backward, left and right movements of the robot.

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Fastest Finger first using Raspberry pi (EFY May 2016)
Fastest finger first systems are used in school, college and TV contests. The team which presses their push-button switch first is entitled to answer the query. When two or more teams press their push buttons within a very small time gap, it becomes very difficult to identify the team that pressed the button first. In such cases, the decision can be biased due to human intervention. The system presented here takes care of the aforesaid problem. This system can be used for a maximum of four teams in its present form. It is built around a Raspberry Pi board and a solid-state relay module.

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Arduino for ATmega32 (EFY June 2016)
Arduino is very helpful for people who have little knowledge of programming or electronics. The user does not need to understand the hardware or the low level coding of the AVR controller. Arduino is easy to use and can be learned with very little effort. Hence, the development/prototyping time using Arduino is considerably less. Arduino is based on WinAVR, a gcc compiler for AVR. You can create an Arduino project in Atmel Studio and even simulate it. At present Arduino uses ATmega328, ATmega168, ATmelga1280, ATmega2560 and ATmega8 boards controllers. However, many users/ developers are using ATmega32 controller in their projects now and are more familiar with this controller. But it is not seen in the list of Arduino boards in Arduino IDE. ATmega32 has 32 general purpose input/output (GPIO) pins, which is more than 20 used in ATmega328. It is disappointing that some boards have more I/O pins, like ATmega1280 and ATmega 2560, but are expensive. In this project, we use ATmega32 as a microcontroller in Arduino board and utilise almost all the 32 GPIO pins available

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GSM based messaging system using Arduino (EFY June 2016)
Today, GSM networks are widely-used, whether for making calls or sending SMS es. But some places need urgent messages like in colleges, railway stations, events, share market and so on, and this information should be in real-time. This project is an experiment to give a start to the era of ending messages in real-time. It is about writing the message, which is to be displayed on mobiles, and sending it as an SMS to the receivers. The received message is fetched into a microcontroller (MCU) and, after authentication, is displayed on an LCD screen.

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XBee Interfacing with Raspberry Pi Model 2 (EFY June 2016)
XBee Pro (S2) module is an XBee/ZB/ ZigBee Mesh Protocol based wireless transceiver designed by Digi International with an excellent range of 1.6 kilometres (one mile) line of sight (for 50mW, U.FL connection) and 90 metres indoors. This device works on 3.3V DC @ 295mA in transmission mode and has a maximum data rate of 250kbps. The data from the processor to XBee module is transmitted via a serial port. Raspberry Pi Model 2 is a second-generation Raspberry Pi that was released in February 2015. It is a Linux based computer and has a powerful Broadcom BCM2836 ARMv7 900MHz quad-core processor and 1GB SDRAM. It has a total of 40 pins, including 17 pins GPIO along with HDMI, micro SD card slot, Ethernet, USB 2.0 and 3.5 audio (out) ports.

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Air Quality meter (EFY july 2016)
Air pollution and concern about air quality is not something new. Complaints were recorded even in the 13th century when coal was first used for industrial purposes in London. From the middle of the 19th century, the atmosphere of major British cities was regularly polluted by coal smoke in winters, giving rise to the infamous mixture of fog and smoke known as smog. Today the emphasis has shifted from pollution problems caused by the industry to the ones associated with motor vehicle emissions. A typical PM2.5/10 based meter costs around US$ 200. Here we present a meter for monitoring air particles, gas concentration, temperature, humidity and time, which costs around US$ 45 only.

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Raspberry Pi SMS server (EFY July 2016)
Until recently, for sending an SMS we had to use third-party services from the Internet. We had to log on to a third-party server, copy and paste the message in the text box, pull up the mobile phone numbers, or copy and paste the group of mobile phone numbers separated by commas and then press Send. In some rare cases, the SMS would not reach the destinations. So the guys at our company decided to buy an SMS server to create own facility for sending mass SMSes. The proposal was moved and eventually the SMS server was bought and put into operation. But when I heard how much the entire system cost, I was spellbound. That is when I decided to make a cheap and efficient SMS server on Raspberry Pi (or Raspi) at a fraction of the cost. In this article, we will design an SMS server on Raspi using a GPRS shield.

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SMS based home automation (EFY July 2016)
Today, GSM networks are widely-used, whether for making calls or sending SMSes. In this project we will be controlling home appliances by sending SMSes. There are many types of home automation systems available in the market. Most are simple home appliances controlling systems like DTMF controlled home appliances, IR remote controlled home appliances and radio frequency (RF) based home appliances. The main aim of this article is to develop an electronic application that uses GSM mobile technology to control different electronic/electrical equipment. This system executes accurate equipment control according to the message sent by the mobile phone. Just by sending a message to the GSM modem interfaced to a microcontroller (MCU), you can perform on/off operations. You can also verify the present status of the equipment through their display status on the LCD.

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Arduino based programmable digital data display (August 2016)
LCDs are widely used in applications like token-display machines in malls and super markets, order number displays in restaurants and café, and so on. The project presented here demonstrates the working of Arduino based message display on LCD using Bluetooth. This circuit uses Arduino board that accepts data via HC-05 Bluetooth module from various types of gadgets like Android based smartphones. Arduino is the heart of this program
mable display.

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Home automation using Android (August 2016)
Nowadays, people have smartphones with them all the time. So it makes sense to use these to control home appliances. Presented here is a home automation system using a simple Android app, which you can use to control electrical appliances with clicks or voice commands. Commands are sent via Bluetooth to Arduino Uno. So you need not get up to switch on or switch off the device while watching a movie or doing some work. Circuit and working. The circuit is built around Arduino Uno board, Bluetooth module HC-05 and a 3-channel relay board. The number of channels depends on the number of appliances you wish to control. Arduino Uno is powered with a 12V DC adaptor/power source. The relay module and Bluetooth module can be, in turn, powered using a board power supply of Arduino Uno.

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Temperature based fan speed control and monitoring using Arduino (EFY August 2016)
This project is a standalone automatic fan speed controller that controls the speed of an electric fan according to the requirement. Use of embedded technology makes this closed-loop feedback control system efficient and reliable. The microcontroller (MCU) ATMega8/168/328 allows dynamic and faster control and the LCD makes the system user-friendly. Sensed temperature and fan speed levels are simultaneously displayed on the LCD panel. The project is very compact and uses a few components only. It can be implemented for several applications including air-conditioners, water-heaters, snow-melters, ovens, heat-exchangers, mixers, furnaces, incubators, thermal baths and veterinary operating tables. The project will help save energy/electricity.

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Real-Time MULTIPLE COLOUR TRACKING (EFY Sept 2016)
This project uses the fundamentals of computer vision to track three different colours: red, blue and yellow. When you run this program, a camera window opens up along with the object detected by the webcam or a laptop camera. Colour detection is indicated by rectangular boxes around the objects along with the names of the colours: red, blue and yellow. The program can be used in robotics to detect colours. It can also be used for driver less cars, traffic, vehicles, etc, besides the separation of different coloured objects using pick-and-place robotic arms.

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Sound operated device control system ( EFY Sept 2016 )
In movies like Ironman and Players, it is shown that appliances are operated by human speech or sound. Similar concept is implemented in this project. The system responds to pre-stored sound and performs particular functions. That is, command signals are first stored in the database and when you run the project, a real-time sound or speech signal is compared with the signals stored in the database. If signals match, an appliance/ load is turned on/off. For instance, sound command ‘Switch on the fan’ is used to operate the fan. This project has vital applications especially for handicaps. It can also be used to provide security and authentication.

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WIRELESS DISPLAY Using Arduino (EFY Sept 2016)
Arduino Uno is a microcontroller board based on ATmega328. This DIY demonstrates how you can use two Arduino boards to make a wireless display
using 434MHz ASK RF modules. Data is transmitted wirelessly using the RF module from the transmitter end through the serial monitor of Arduino IDE. It is received at the receiver end and displayed on a common 16x2 LCD. This system can be used as wireless display for temperature, humidity and gas sensors. It has a good range and, using a repeater, the range can be extended.

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0-50V VARIABLE POWER SUPPLY Using LM317 (EFY Oct 2016)
Presented here is a 0-50V, 1A variable power supply that has been designed using positive-adjustable voltage regulator LM317 IC. This IC normally gener-
ates voltages in the range of 1.2V to 25V, but here it produces 0 to 50V with a current of 1A. The circuit used increases the upper voltage from 25V to 50V and decreases the -lower voltage from 1.2V to 0V.

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Voice-Controlled HOME AUTOMATION SYSTEM (EFY Oct 2016)
This project is about controlling home appliances with your voice through an Android app. An Arduino Mega board is used for controlling the relay through which an appliance is switched on/off. You can modify the Android app to add more functions. The circuit consists of Arduino Mega 2560 board for comparing the input string received through Bluetooth with the stored string to give output to digital pin 6 to control the relay. Bluetooth module HC-05 transmits and also receives data serially that can be read by the micro controller (MCU). A relay is used here to control only one appliance, though you can use a multi channel relay board to control multiple appliances. Mega 2560 has 54 digital pins, each of which can be used to control an appliance. The MCU can be programmed to compare the relative strings (speech).

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12V Battery charger cum Variable power supply (EFY Nov 2016)
The circuit presented here can charge a 12V lead-acid battery of 50Ah to 80Ah (even up to 100Ah) capacity and can even be used as up to 18V DC variable power supply of maximum 5A capacity, which is useful for a test bench. The circuit can automatically detect the presence of a battery connection and start charging. At that time, it disconnects the output provided as variable power supply. It also detects the wrong/reverse polarity connection of the
battery terminals and raises an alarm. The charger initially charges the battery at a higher voltage (about 14.2V), and once it is fully charged, it maintains the battery charge at a constant voltage (about 13.4V).

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GPS distance meter (EFY Nov 2016)
Presented here is a project based on Global Positioning System (GPS) and ATmega328P-PU micro controller to measure the distance between two points using Haversine formula. It can be a handy tool for a thermal power-plant patrolling/inspection or any other application where large distance measurement is required. For example, in the thermal power plant industry, a patroller is required to take measurements for laying out a new route, replacement/shifting of old routes or extension of pipelines deep inside the dyke. These activities are carried out quite often, and each measurement requires two persons for holding a large measuring tape. Demand for a GPS distance meter starts here.

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Wireless Digital Thermometer for Multiple sensors (EFY Nov 2016)
The last article ‘Remote Sensing Thermometer’ published in June 2013 issue gave the constructional details of a project for sensing and measuring temperature of a body from a remote place. The circuit described there works absolutely fine, but it suffers from a major drawback; it cannot measure more than one temperature at a time. To overcome this problem, a different technique is adopted here, which allows you to sense eight (at the most) transducers at a time.

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Wireless Powered LED (EFY DEC2016)
Wireless power is transferred from transmitter to receiver coil using inductive coupling principle. For wireless power transfer to work efficiently, frequency of the transmitter and the receiver must be tuned to the same frequency. LC tank of transmitter side produces an oscillating magnetic field of the tuned frequency. LC tank of receiver side is same as the frequency of transmitter side, thus achieving high efficiency. This wireless-powered LED can be used in mobile phone battery chargers, electric tooth brushes and low-powered loads such as LEDs, SMPS, rotors and so on.

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Arduino Based GSM HOME SECURITY SYSTEM (EFY DEC 2016)
This project is designed using normally-closed reed switches connected to doors and windows and additional passive infrared (PIR) motion sensors to detect movement of a burglar or an unwanted intruder in your home. The security system can dial up to two phone numbers to alert you. It can also send text message to one of the numbers. It works off a 12V power supply (connected across CON2). An Arduino microcontroller (MCU) requires only 5V but a GSM modem requires 12V. As Arduino Uno has an inbuilt 5V voltage regulator, a common 12V supply can be used for the whole system. It is built around two Arduino Uno boards (Board 1) and (Board 2), one SIM900 GSM module, TIP142 (T1, T2) and 2N2222 (T3-T5) transistors, magnetic reed switches, PIR motion sensors and a few other components.

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Remote controlled Smart Fan using AT89C2051 (EFY DEC 2016)
The remote-controlled smart fans available in the market are very expensive and their operating principles are difficult to understand. Here is a simple circuit for a remote-controlled smart fan that can control the speed of a fan or light intensity of an electric bulb.The VIRE remote (Fig. 1) is generally used for MP3 players, FM radios and the like. Its range is up to 12 metres, so there is no need to control the fan/bulb manually. The AT89C2051 microcontroller (MCU) acts as a smart regulator. Circuit of the remote-controlled smart fan using AT89C2051 is shown in Fig. 2. It is built around centre tapped 12V-0-12V, 750mA transformer (X1), rectifier diodes 1N4007 (D1, D2), 2200µF/25V (C1), 100µF/16V(C2) filter capacitors and voltage regulator 7805 (IC1) that produces 5V constant output voltage, AT89C2051 (IC2) MCU, IR receiver TSOP1738 (IRX1), VIRE IR remote, 12V electromagnetic relays, transistors BC547 (T1, T2, T3) and a few other components. In this project, MCU acts as a smart electronic regulator based on IR remote signals.

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IoT-ENABLED AIR POLLUTION METER With Digital Dashboard On Smartphone (EFY Jan 2017)
Presented here is a project to monitor air quality on your smartphone using Blynk application and Arduino board. Blynk is an Internet of Things (IoT) platform to control Arduino, Raspberry Pi and the like over the Internet. In this project Blynk provides a digital dashboard on your smart phone that
displays real-time air quality readings for the immediate surroundings. Blynk is not meant for a specific board or shield. It will get you online and ready for
the IoT, irrespective of whether Arduino or Raspberry Pi is linked to the Internet over Wi-Fi, Ethernet or an ESP8266 chip.

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Ultrasonic Distance meter using Raspberry Pi -2 (EFY Jan 2017)
Ultrasonic ranging module HC-SR04 provides 2cm to 400cm non-contact distance measurement range. Its accuracy can reach ±3mm with a cycle period of 50ms, which is the minimum time delay recommended before measurements are taken. The module includes ultrasonic transmitter, receiver and control circuit. Raspberry Pi 2 is a second-generation Raspberry Pi board, which was released in February 2015. It is a Linux based computer with a powerful Broadcom BCM2836 ARMv7 900MHz quad-core processor and 1GB SDRAM. It runs on 5V DC at 200mA and has 40 GPIO pins, along with HDMI, micro-SD card slot, Ethernet, USB 2.0 and 3.5 audio (out) ports.

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Surveillance camera based on Raspi Cam and Android Aap (EFY Feb 2017)
This project describes how to build a surveillance camera based on Raspberry Pi (Raspi) that records HD video only when something moves in the monitored area. Live feed can be viewed from any Web, including one on a mobile phone. Security cameras are common in most industries around the world. Their applications can range from preventing theft or vandalism to traffic and weather monitoring and much more. Due to a small form factor, affordable price and low power consumption, Raspberry Pi can be easily integrated in a surveillance camera. In this project we will first connect Raspi camera to Raspi, and stream live video from it. We can also watch the streaming of content from our Android device. We will also take photographs with different effects. Raspi is a credit-card-sized low cost microcomputer that can run Linux operating system, and has endless extension possibilities.

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Line Frequency Meter Based on Reciprocal Counting (EFY Feb 2017)
Precise measurement of line signal frequency is very important in many applications, especially in the management of power grid systems. Tasks like
calibration of governors of engines that run generators in power plants need a resolution up to 0.01Hz. Frequency is also an important parameter in load sharing among several power plants in the grid. When the required resolution of the displayed frequency is 1Hz, the instrument becomes simple. Direct frequency counting is one of the many possible methods.

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IoT BASED NOTIFICATION SYSTEM Using Android App (EFY March 2017)
Presented here is a smart notification system for a door sensor, motion detector, fire alarm and doorbell using Raspberry Pi (RPi) and Pushover app. The project triggers an event through various sensors and sends notifications to your smartphone. Sensors used in this project include a magnetic reed switch for a door or window, PIR sensor for motion detection and NTC thermistor for fire alarm. The issue of security is becoming more prevalent. The Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled home security solutions like this use sensors to collect and share data from multiple edge devices. If an attacker gains access to these smart systems through malicious means, the underlying functional logic of control systems can alert the owner. Connected home security systems offer a myriad of features including door and window sensors, motion detectors, fire alarms and so on, all connected via the Cloud to a mobile device or the Web.

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Arduino Based DIGITAL CAPACITANCE METER (EFY March 2017)
Capacitive sensors are widely used to measure various physical and chemical process parameters such as displacement, acceleration, thickness, force, pressure, stress, level and humidity. The measured value of capacitance is then calibrated in terms of the process parameter for indication and/or control. This project presents an interrupt based approach by employing an NE555 timer and Arduino Uno to measure capacitance in the range of 1µF to 1mF, and provide local indication using an LCD and data acquisition using a PC display (serial monitor of Arduino IDE). Two methods have been described here: first with NE555 timer configured in astable multivibrator mode and second with NE555 timer configured in monostable mode

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RGB COLOUR DETECTOR Using TCS3200 Sensor Module (EFY March 2017)
This is a simple colour sensor using Arduino Uno R3 and TCS3200 colour sensor module. It can be useful for colour identification and detection for food processing units, colour printer aplications, paint-mixing applications and other industrial applications including robotics. This project is used for detecting primary colours (red, green and blue, or RGB)—colours that are physically available in LEDs in one package; for example, common cathode or common-cathode RGB LED. We can display primary colours and also generate specific colours by modifying the Arduino code. The project demonstrates the basic interfacing of TCS3200 sensor, Arduino Uno and common-cathode RGB LED. On the microscopic level, you can see the square boxes inside the eye on the sensor. These square boxes are arrays of the RGB matrix. Each of these boxes contains three sensors: one each for sensing red light, green light and blue light intensity. It is better than TCS230 colour sensor module. This sensor can be used to identify any number of colours with an accurate programming code.

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Serial Interface using Phyton (EFY April 2017)
Presented here is a project for a simple transistor’s output characteristic curve-tracer program through the serial interface and PIC microcontroller using Python programming language. Output characteristic curve of a transistor is automated using Python software and serial interface. Application software for collecting the measured value and displaying it on the monitor screen is developed using Python. Engineers and academicians have been using high-level languages like Visual C++, Visual Basic and Delphi for connecting their gadgets/embedded systems with the computer for measurement and control purposes for a long time. Recently, many shifted their preference to Python as their computer language for measurement and analysis. The main advantage of using Python is the support of a large open source community. Python is an interpreted programming language like BASIC, which saves
considerable time during program development because compilation and linking are not required. Programs written in Python are typically much short-
er as compared to ones written in C or C++. Python can be used for writing standalone programs and scripting applications. It is free, portable, powerful
and remarkably easy to use.

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DUAL-LASER SECURITY SYSTEM Using An Old Feature Phone (EFY April 2017)
A security system having a single laser beam may not be very effective as any moving object or animal can interrupt it, causing a false alarm. Presented here is a security system having two laser beams with calling alert feature, using a basic mobile phone (old model), also known as feature phone. The security system can be used in a restricted area like a farm or as a home security system. When an intruder cuts or interrupts both laser beams at the same time, an alarm sound is generated and an alert call is made to your current mobile phone.

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Wireless GATE ALARM (EFY April 2017)
This wireless gate alarm uses infrared (IR) and 433MHz RF modules. IR transmitter unit emits 36kHz signal and is fitted on one side of the gate’s frame. IR
receiver unit and RF transmitter module, along with the encoder, are fitted on the opposite side of the gate’s frame. The alarm unit is kept inside the house, and it uses 433MHz RF receiver module and musical alarm circuit.

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Configurable DC-TO-DC CONVERTER (EFY May 2017)
Most kits with embedded microcontrollers (MCUs) operate off a single power supply (VCC) source like 5V or 3.3V. But for some experiments you need one or more positive voltages higher than VCC and one or more negative voltages lower than ground. Often, the required current is in several millimperes (mAs). In such cases, you may use ICL7660, ICL7660A or similar integrated circuits (ICs) for the power supply. But voltage and current provided by a single ICL7660 is not sufficient, so you may need two or more ICs in parallel or cascaded to meet the requirement. This article describes a universal configurable module that uses three ICL7660 ICs. The module is flexible and allows all basic configurations for ICL7660 and similar ICs.

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Water pump dry run guard (EFY may 2017)
Here is an effective solution for protection of household submersible water pumps against dry running. Minimum water-level monitoring feature in the circuit is realised using suspended sensor probes to ensure that the water pumps will not run under a dry condition. Besides, switch-on and return-delay features prevent the pumps from unwanted brief operation when handling turbulent underground water.

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Make your own remote controlled robot (EFY May 2017)
To control a robot, the signal is usually sent through a wireless system using radio frequency (RF) and infrared (IR). To send an IR signal, you need a transmitter and a receiver with an encoding and decoding system. The simple circuit presented here can control the movement of a robot using an IR remote that is used for a TV or DVD player, or an equivalent IR remote.The basic working principle of this project is that the signal sent by the IR remote on pressing Play/Record button on the remote is saved in EEPROM of the microcontroller (MCU) in record mode. It plays back the same code (signal) when you press the same button in play mode. The program for the MCU can save 4-bit code (0 to F hex code) in record mode and output the same 4bit code when the button is pressed in play mode. Using the combination of these four bits, two motors installed on either side of the robot (third one being the caster wheel) can be controlled through a motor driver IC. Thus, different codes are used to control different movements of the robot.

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PC based Oscilloscope using Arduino (EFY June 2017)
Oscilloscopes are an essential tool for electronics hobbyists and professionals to verify that their designs would work as expected. PC-based oscilloscopes score over standalone oscilloscopes due to their compact size, low cost and ability to do offline analysis. Here we describe how you can make your own oscilloscope at a very low cost using your PC and an Arduino board as the hardware for signal acquisition. You can use this oscilloscope to capture frequency signals up to 5kHz. The Arduino board, the heart of the oscilloscope, reads the values from its inbuilt analogue to-digital converter (ADC) and
pushes these to the PC via USB port. We have provided here an Arduino sketch, which you can compile and load directly to the Arduino. You also need to install an executable file or application in your Windows PC. This application works as the front-end to plot input signals as waveforms on your computer screen.

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AUTO REVERSIBLE DC MOTOR With Speed And Rotation Control (EFY June 2017)
DC motors are widely used in different machines, mechanisms and motion controls in manufacturing and processing industries. In these machines, it is often required to control speed, direction and the number of rotations of the motor. Some applications require only speed control, some only rotation control and some only direction control. Many applications require control of two or all three parameters.

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ULTRA-LOW-POWER SENSOR HUB Using nRF24L01 Modules (EFY June 2017)
Presented here is an ATmega328P microcontroller-based ultra low-power sensor hub using nRF24L01+ radio frequency (RF) transceiver modules having transmitter and receiver units. The transmitter sends humidity and temperature values of a place to the receiver kept at a remote location for display on an OLED module. The nRF24L01+ module used in the receiver unit is a 2.4GHz transceiver suitable for ultra-low-power wireless applications. It is designed for operation in ISM band (industrial, scientific and medical radio band) of 2.400-2.4835GHz. The nRF24L01+PA and LNA module used in the transmitter unit is similar to nRF24L01+ but has built-in power amplifier (PA) and low-noise amplifier (LNA) circuits, which help transmit the signal to a longer distance and achieve more stable performance for industry standard applications. The search for a low-power system started when some EFY readers questioned a DIY of mine, saying that ATmega328P processor would not sustain 3.3/5 volts. But it worked well because of the extreme low power capability of the ATmega processor. More detail is provided under extreme low power sub-head of this article.

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VOTING MACHINE Using AVR Microcontroller (EFY July 2017)
Polling by electronic voting machines (EVMs) has become a norm during elections. Unlike paper ballot systems, EVMs are safe and reliable as these rule
out the possibility of invalid voting. These are more economical and efficient too. Their compact size saves transportation costs. Here we describe the design of an electronic voting machine based on ATmega16A microcontroller. To cast a vote, users need to press the key against the name of the candidate of their choice. The vote is automatically saved in the microcontroller, and simultaneously the LCD shows the message “Thank You.” The circuit of the
electronic voting machine is built around ATmega16A microcontroller (IC2), IC 7805 (IC1), a 16×2 LCD (LCD1) and other associated components.

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Arduino-Based SMARTPHONE CONTROLLED ROBOT CAR (EFY August 2017)
Nowadays smartphones can be used to control a host of electrical and electronic devices including motors, music systems and lights. Here we present
an Arduino based robot car, which can be controlled using an Android smartphone having Arduino RC application installed in it. This bot receives commands from your smartphone with the help of a Bluetooth. The ATmega328 chip on the Arduino Uno board comes with a bootloader, which allows you to burn the program to the chip without an external hardware programmer. After the chip is programmed, it can be removed from the board. The board can be powered from USB connection or external power supply such as batteries or AC/DC adaptors. After connecting the power supply to Vin pin, you get regulated 5V and 3.3V DC on the respective pins of the Arduino board. 5V is used to power the HC-05 Bluetooth module. Serial pins 0 (RX) and (TX) of Arduino are used to communicate with HC-05 module. Pins 4 through 7 are connected to H-bridge motor driver L293D IC. Out of these four pins, pins 5 and 6 provide 8-bit PWM output using analog Write( ) function defined in the asc_car.ino Arduino sketch. Pins 2 and 3 of Arduino (not used in this project) can be used for additional functions like controlling lights, horn, etc.

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Fan Speed Regulator Using PIC16F73 (EFY Aug 2017)
Voltage dips in mains supply make fans run very slow, leaving you sweaty through hot summers, especially if you don’t own an air-conditioner (AC). Voltage may also dip because of an AC drawing a large current, causing the fan to slow down. The so-called fan regulators fitted on the switchboard for speed control merely reduce the fan speed, not increase it. Earlier, regulators used to have resistors that got connected in series with the fan to drop the voltage and hence the speed. These had a rotating switch with steps 1 to 5 to set the speed below normal, and were fitted on the panel board along with the fan switch, light switch and other power outlet sockets.

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BATTERY CHARGER And DISCHARGER Using USB Power Supply (EFY Sept 2017)
Gadgets like electronic toys and musical players commonly use 1.2V rechargeable batteries in capacities ranging from 200mAh to 2800mAh,
which need to be charged and maintained regularly. Here we present a simple and low-cost device that can charge or discharge up to four
1.2V rechargeable batteries simultaneously with maximum current of around 100mA per battery. As the device uses USB power, it doesn’t
require any external power supply. Circuit and working Circuit of the battery charger and discharger with USB power supply is shown
in Fig. 1. It is built around four 30-ohm, 1-watt resistors (R1 through R4), four 1N4007 diodes (D1 through D4), nine LEDs (LED1 through
LED9), a TL431 shunt regulator (IC1), an LM324 quadruple op-amp (IC2), four 2.5V, 200mA small bulbs and a few other components.

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High-Fidelity FM TRANSMITTER (EFY Sept 2017)
FM broadcasting is radio broadcasting using frequency modulation technology. In order to attain high-fidelity broadcast of music and speech, all audio frequencies up to 15kHz must be transmitted. The low-power transmitter presented here achieves that using simple and readily available components. Its output frequency is locked to 96MHz using the phase-locked loop (PLL) approach. The circuit is built around dual D-type positive-edge-triggered flip-flop 74AC74 (IC1), ripple carry binary counter CD4060 (IC3 and IC5), low-power audio amplifier LM386 (IC6), phase-locked loop CD4046 (IC4), 5V voltage regulator 7805 (IC2) and a few other components.

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Automatic DRIP IRRIGATION SYSTEM (EFY Oct 2017)
Conventional irrigation method wastes a lot of water, leading to a high cost of electricity to run the pumpset for irrigation. Automation can help save water,
electricity as well as human efforts. This can be achieved with the help of a single soil-moisture sensor and an AVR microcontroller. Here we present such an automated plant watering system that senses the moisture level of the soil and automatically switches the pump on when the power is ‘on.’

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BIPOLAR POWER SUPPLY With Adjustable Regulators (EFY Oct 2017)
LM317T and LM337T ICs are well-known, low-cost adjustable voltage regulators capable of delivering up to 1.5A current output with power dissipation of up to 20W. LM317T produces a positive output voltage, while LM337T produces a negative output voltage. It is useful to have a bipolar power supply with LM317T and LM337T producing symmetrical output power. However, adjusting both output voltages simultaneously is an issue. The usual solution is to build a tracking voltage regulator with operational amplifier, which tracks the positive or negative output of the power supply. But here power supplies and other parameters of the operational amplifier can be limiting factors for the required power output. Another solution is to use a stereo potentiometer (potmeter) to adjust both the output power supplies simultaneously. Good quality stereo potentiometers have small differences (of about ±5%) between the two outputs. If this difference is too large, you may use additional potentiometers to adjust the output voltages to exactly the same value. Here we present the circuit of a bipolar power supply with LM317T and LM337T adjustable regulators. The circuit provides the facility to adjust output voltages more precisely with individual potentiometers. Also, output voltages can be adjusted from near-ground levels, not from the typical ±1.25V.

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Single Wire 4x4 Matrix Keypad Using AVR (EFY Oct 2017)
This tutorial demonstrates a different way of interfacing a 4x4 matrix keypad with ATmega32 AVR microcontroller. Keypad is one of the most important input devices used in electronics projects. It is one of the easiest ways to give commands or instructions to an electronic system. But when designing a traditional matrix keypad, you require more number of input/output (I/O) pins. For example, if you are developing a 4x4 keypad of 16 keys, you require eight digital I/O lines of the microcontroller device. This project uses only a single analogue pin to achieve the same goal, so the remaining pins are available for other purposes. The system consists of a 4x4 keypad that inputs data to the microcontroller through a single wire, ATmega32 microcontroller for processing the received signal, power supply section and a 16x2 LCD for displaying the keys.

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TRIPLE POWER SUPPLY From USB (EFY Oct 2017)
Nowadays, most portable electronic gadgets are powered by USB adaptors. These adaptors have 5V, 1A to 5V, 2.1A output, which is enough to power low-power circuits of different voltages while testing a prototype. This is done either by using charge pumps or suitable converters. Presented here is the circuit to derive three voltages (3.3V, 5V and 12V) from a USB adaptor. the circuit is built around low-dropout voltage regulator LP2985-3.3 (IC1), monolithic DC-DC converter MC34063A (IC2) a Schottky diode 1N5819 (D1), 22µH inductor (L1) and a few other components.

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Getting Started With NodeMCU DEVELOPMENT BOARD For IoT (EFY Nov 2017)
Since Internet of Things (IoT) projects are now quite popular, I recently bought a NodeMCU board to try IoT application development. The NodeMCU is an open source development board based on ESP8266EX microcontroller with integrated Wi-Fi transceiver. Uploading programs to NodeMCU from any computer via microUSB port is very easy as it supports several programing languages. This makes NodeMCU a smart choice to play with the IoT. Here I explain how to get started with NodeMCU board using some common tools including Arduino, PuTTY, Lualoder and ESPlorer. NodeMCU board comes in two popular versions: NodeMCU v0.9 with ESP12, and NodeMCU v1.0 with ESP12E (refer Fig. 1). NodeMCU v1.0 is the current version, which is not only breadboard-ready but also has some extra GPIOs

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INTERFACING MULTIPLE LCDs With Arduino (EFY Nov 2017)
Here we describe interfacing of three 16x2 LCDs with common data lines to an Arduino Uno board. Four data lines of all the three LCDs are connected to digital pins of the Arduino Uno board but data displayed on each LCD is different. Circuit and working The circuit diagram for interfacing of three LCDs with Arduino is shown in Fig. 1. It is built around popular Arduino Uno board (BOARD1), three 16x2 LCDs (LCD1 through LCD3), three 10-kiloohm resets (VR1 through VR3) and a few other components. The Arduino board is the brain of the circuit, which displays data on the three LCDs simultaneously or individually depending on the requirement.

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Password-Protected BLUETOOTH REMOTE CONTROL (EFY Dec 2017)
This password-protected wireless remote control operating at 2.4GHz frequency can be used to control robots, home appliances, machines, etc. Here we have used the secure remote to control a war robot that has three motors, one of which is used to lift objects or weapons such as a cutter (or sword). The article describes configuration of the remote control system and doesn’t cover construction and working of the robot in detail due to paucity of space. The project consists of two pairs of Arduino and Bluetooth HC-05 modules, one of which is used in the transmitter unit and the other in the receiver unit. The Bluetooth module on the transmitter side is configured as master, while the module on the receiver side is configured as slave.

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Arduino Based Two-wheel self-balancing Segway (EFY Jan 2018)
Segbot, Segway and inverted pendulum—two-wheel self balancing robots are known by many names. Here we build a two wheel self-balancing robot (Segway) using an MPU-6050 chip. The inertia measuring MPU-6050 chip has six motion sensors—three gyros and three accelerometers—all integrated into one breakout board. Here, we only need angular position or gyro of the wheel’s axis. Gyro readings drift over time, requiring re-calibration quite often. Therefore, to get correct angular position, gyro readings are corrected with the help of a neighboring accelerator. Once the angular position is achieved, traction motors push the cart towards the direction of falling. The greater the angle of shift, the greater the speed with which the traction motor pushes the cart. As the angle of shift with vertical position reduces to zero, the speed reduces. Thus, the top of the cart moves like a pendulum, maintaining the balance.

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Multi function Rechargeable Clock (EFY Jan 2018)
Presented here is a digital clock that also functions as a rechargeable light lantern and a mobile charger. The clock has all the basic functions like date time display, alarm and room temperature display. It is powered by a lead-acid battery, which can be recharged through solar power or mains power supply. So the clock never runs out of power. The clock is provided with a female USB socket, which can be used to charge most of your mobile phones and gadgets. Its dedicated battery charging and load cut-off circuitry takes care of the battery through exact charging topology and prevents it from getting over charged or under charged.

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DIY Smart Switch box (EFY Feb 2018)
Most of us leave our battery operated devices like mobile phones, laptops, tablets, power banks and modems plugged into a charger overnight even though these devices, especially smartphones with quick-charge option, take about two hours or less to fully charge. After the device is fully charged, the charger remains idle for more than five hours (say, from 1am to 6am). Since we usually don’t access the Internet at night, modems too are just idling during this time, consuming some power. Here we describe a power saver circuit for mobile chargers and modems. It is a simple op-amp-based multipurpose circuit that provides individual delays for your devices. After a specific amount of time, it automatically turns the devices off. This saves power wastage during idle time while increasing the operating life-time of devices.

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Wireless VU METER (EFY Feb 2018)
V U meter is a standard device that indicates signal level in audio equipment. Unlike other devices, this meter doesn’t require physical connection between the audio source and the circuit. The speaker of any audio device produces magnetic fields according to the music. These magnetic fields are sensed by inductor L1 (10µH) and amplified by the pre-amplifier circuit built around T1. The output of the pre-amp circuit is fed to analogue to digital converter (ADC) pin 40 of the AVR microcontroller (IC1). The output voltage of the pre-amp circuit is below 2Vpp and the ADC reference voltage is 2.5V. The microcontroller processes the input signal to drive the bargraph LED (BAR1) connected to Port C of IC1. The louder the music signal, the more the number of LEDs that glow in the bargraph.

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Gesture Controlled Wheel Chair Using ATmega32 (EFY Feb2017)
Wheelchairs are useful for people for whom walking is difficult or impossible due to some illness, injury or disability. There are different types of wheelchairs. Manual wheelchairs are pushed using their handles. Motorized wheelchairs, are driven by joystick. Voice-controlled wheelchairs are the latest development. These can be driven just by giving voice commands. A more advanced and intelligent version of the wheelchair is controlled directly through human mind, such as the one used by renowned scientist Stephen Hawking. In case a person is unable to move the wheelchair even with joystick or voice command, an alternative is gesture-controlled wheelchair. The wheelchair moves as per user’s finger gestures. The user has to simply bend his fingers to move the wheelchair. Here we present the project to control a wheelchair through finger gestures. It uses flex sensors to record finger gestures. The gesture signals are fed to ATmega32 microcontroller, which processes the information to control four DC motors in order to move the wheelchair in any desired direction. Flex sensors are widely used to convert finger gestures into equivalent electrical signals. These are actually variable resistors, whose resistance changes when these are bent in either direction. This change in resistance is converted into an equivalent voltage, which can be used for further processing.

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DIY Automatic Water Refiller (EFY March 2018)
Air coolers provide cool air in a room by adding moisture to the air. This moist air is blown inside the room by an exhaust fan or blower, which makes the room temperature drop. These coolers require frequent refilling of water. Presented here is a circuit to refill water automatically in an air-cooler tank when the water drops below a predetermined level. It is built around NE555 timer (IC1), transistor BC547 (T1), reed switches (S1 and S2), and a few other components. IC1 is configured similar to bi-stable mode, the only difference being that switch S1 is connected to pin 6 instead of pin 4.

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Software Defined Radio (EFY March 2018)
Software-defined radio (SDR) is one of most important wireless communication technologies. It is a unique type of radio system that can tune to any frequency band. The SDR platform is generic, that is, one platform supports various signals of different frequencies. Earlier, SDR hardware was designed only to support high-end computer systems and desktop computers. However, with recent advancements in smartphone technology and availability of affordable smartphones, developers have started working on SDR support for mobile phones.RTL-SDR dongles can easily perform the function of an SDR receiver using an Android smartphone with on-the-go (OTG) support.

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Virtual Telepresence Robot suing Raspberry Pi (EFY March 2018)
This robot with a camera is placed in a remote location to capture the environment in visual form using Raspberry Pi (RPi). The captured visuals are displayed on the user’s virtual reality (VR) headset. An added feature allows the camera to move in the direction of the user’s head movements. This gives the user a real-time experience as if he is present where the robot is located. The robot can also be moved in any direction through an app installed in the user’s smartphone.Virtual reality The video captured by RPi camera can be viewed on a smartphone placed in the virtual reality (VR) headset. The project lets the user experience virtual reality through VR headset. Dual-screen mode is enabled in the smartphone for this purpose. The smartphone reads the accelerometer and magnetometer data of the direction in which the user turns his head, say, right or left. This data is sent to the modem over Wi-Fi and to the RPi board, which, in turn, provides these values as inputs to the servo motors. Two servo motors are used to move the camera—one for the vertical movement and the other for the horizontal movement. So when you turn your head along with VR headset to the right side, the RPi camera will also turn to the right direction.

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Automatic Certificate Generation Using MATLAB (EFY April 2018)
MATLAB is a versatile tool that can automate many tasks. Presented here is a MATLAB code to generate certificates for workshops, conferences, symposiums, etc. Conventionally, educational institutions and companies use specialized tools for report cards and certificates generation on a large scale. This MATLAB code can be extended to generate analysis reports for large data sets as well. File name of the blank certificate (A) is used as input in the code. Details to be written on the certificate are obtained from an Excel sheet (B). The data is written over the blank certificate and many such certificates are generated by the MATLAB code (C). The certificates generated by the program can be saved in a folder with a unique file name (D).

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Vehicle tracking system based on GPS and GSM (EFY April 2018)
Presented here is an Arduino based system for vehicle tracking using global positioning system (GPS) and global system for mobile communication (GSM) modules. GSM modem with a SIM card used here uses the communication technique of a regular cellphone. The system can be installed or hidden in your vehicle at a suitable location. After installing this circuit, you can easily track your stolen vehicle using a mobile phone.

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GPS Clock Using Arduino (EFY May 2018)
Global positioning system (GPS) synchronised clocks give accurate time. These clocks are universal and commonly used at railway stations, bus stands and airports. These are widely used for military purposes too. Here we describe a GPS clock based on Arduino Uno R3—an AVR ATmega328-based microcontroller board with six analogue inputs pins and 14 digital input/output (I/O) pins. The microcontroller has 32kB ISP flash memory, 2kB RAM and 1kB EEPROM. The board provides serial ommunication via UART, SPI and I2C.

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Touchscreen and GLCD Based Home Automation (EFY May 2018)
This project controls home electrical appliances using a touchscreen input device. The system comprises two relays for controlling a bulb and a fan as an example. The touchscreen placed on a graphical LCD acts as a control panel for sending control commands through a pair of wireless radio frequency (RF) communication modules. The touchscreen panel on the transmitter side interfaced to a microcontroller sends on/off commands to the receiver where the loads/appliances are connected. By touching the specified portion on the touchscreen panel, the loads are turned on/off remotely through the wireless RF modules.

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WIRELESS LCD DISPLAY Via Bluetooth (EFY May 2018)
This wireless LCD display shows information sent from a smart phone. The user can send text messages with up to 32 alphanumeric characters to the LCD within Bluetooth range of about 10 metres. This project can be extended and implemented in many ways for:
1. Educational organisations (schools and colleges). To inform any changes in the timetable or important information
2. Hospitals. To inform a doctor’s name and her or his department
3. Restaurants. To inform the kitchen staff
4. Offices. To inform the status (busy, available, out of the office, etc) of the boss inside the office

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This IR Remote Can Control Up To Eight Devices (EFY May 2020)
This project based on an 8-bit ATmega328P microcontroller (MCU) can control up to eight devices connected to its electromagnetic relays. The article also describes how to program an MCU to accept infrared (IR) remote control signals for controlling the relays.
Here, an ordinary TV remote control is used along with the 28-pin ATmega328P MCU in DIL package
and Arduino bootloader to control the devices.

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Touchscreen And GLCD Based HOME AUTOMATION (EFY May 2018)
This project controls home electrical appliances using a touchscreen input device. The system comprises two relays for controlling a bulb and a fan as an example. The touchscreen placed on a graphical LCD acts as a control panel for sending control commands through a pair of wireless radio frequency (RF) communication modules. The touchscreen panel on the transmitter side interfaced to a microcontroller sends on/off commands to the receiver where the loads/appliances are connected. By touching the specified portion on the touchscreen panel, the loads are turned on/off remotely through the wireless RF modules.

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Electronics => Projects => Topic started by: pushycat on August 25, 2010, 02:00:38 14:00