EFY Magazine projects

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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

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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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Arduino-based RF Controlled Robot  (EFY December 2012)
Here we present a simple Arduino-board based robot that can be driven remotely using an RF remote control. This robot can be built very quickly in a small budget.

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Gesture-Controlled Robot  (EFY January 2013)
Life can be wonderful if everything around us can be controlled by simple gestures. Gesture recognition technology helps us to interact with machines naturally without any additional device.

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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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Standalone GPS Receiver with LCD Display(EFY January 2013)
This AVR microcontroller-based global positioning system (GPS) receiver can be used to find the exact location of a place and know its standard time.
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Arduino-Based Shadow Alarm (EFY Feb 2013)
Shadow alarms are usually used for protection against theft. A shadow alarm is a device that sounds an alarm when a shadow falls on it. Described here is a simple circuit of an Arduino-based shadow alarm.

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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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RF-based Dual-mode Robot (EFY March 2013)
Here is a dual-mode robot that can be operated manually using an RF-based remote control and can also move automatically avoiding all the obstacles.

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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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