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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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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