ConstruCtion

electroni cs for you August 2010 59 www. e f y mA g . c o m

Dr A.A. BhAskAr, Dr h.N.
PANDyA AND Ms s.J. OzA
Wireless equiPMeNt CONtrOl
usiNg MiCrOCONtrOller
SAN THEO
effective and good for wireless con-
trol of home appliances or industrial
instrumentation.
Block diagram
The system consists of a transmitter
and a receiver as described below.
Transmitter section. Fig. 1 shows
the block diagram of the transmitter
section.
Four pushbutton switches (S1
through S4) are used as inputs to se-
lect the devices and set the time-out
in the transmitter section. These are
designated as up, down, ent and run
keys, respectively. The time-out data
is transferred over the RF wireless link
to the receiver section.
The 8-bit AT89C51 microcontroller
is the main controlling
part of the transmitter
section. It is connected
to the LCD module,
input switches and en-
coder IC (HT12E). The
device control program
is stored in the memory
of the microcontroller
and controls the devices
as per the time-out set-
ting done through input
switches S1 through S4.
A two-line, 16-char-
act er LCD modul e
shows the status of the
main program that is
running inside the mi-
crocontroller.
The HT12E is an 18-
pin DIP package en-
coder IC that encodes
4-bit data and sends it to
TRX-434 RF transmitter
module.
The TRX-434 RF
transmitter module uses
a digital modulation
technique called amplitude-shift key-
ing (ASK) or on-off keying. In this
technique, whenever logic 1 is to be
Parts List
Semiconductors:
IC1 - HT12E encoder
IC2 - AT89C51 microcontroller
IC3 - 7805 5V regulator
IC4 - HT12D/SM5172 decoder
IC5 - CD4519 multiplexer
IC6 - ULN2003 relay driver
TRX-434 - 434MHz RF transmitter
module
RX-434 - 434MHz RF receiver
module
LED1-LED8 - 5mm light-emitting diode
D1-D10 - 1N4148 signal diode
Resistors (all -watt, 5% carbon):
R1, R2, R17,
R20-R24 - 1-kilo-ohm
R3 - 680-kilo-ohm
R4-R11 - 10-kilo-ohm network
(RNW1) resistor
R12-R15 - 4.7-kilo-ohm
R16 - 1.2-kilo-ohm
R18, R19 - 47-kilo-ohm
VR1 - 47-kilo-ohm preset
Capacitors:
C1 - 10F, 16V electrolytic
C2, C3 - 27pF ceramic
C4 - 1000F, 25V electrolytic
C5 - 0.1F ceramic
C6 - 470nF ceramic
Miscellaneous:
LCD1 - 162 line LCD display
S1-S5 - Tactile switches
X
TAL1
- 11.0592 MHz crystal
JS - Jumper switch
- Antenna
- 42-pin berg strip male and
female connectors
H
ere is a microcontroller-
based wireless equipment
controller that can switch on
or off up to four devices at a desired
time interval set by the user in the
transmitter unit. The devices can be
controlled remotely from a distance
of up to 30 metres from the transmit-
ter unit. In the transmitter unit, an
LCD module is used to show the de-
vice numbers and preset control time
for the devices (00 to 99 seconds).
Concepts of wireless RF communica-
tion and automation with AT89C51
microcontroller are used here.
The system is small, simple, cost-
Fig. 1: Block diagram of transmitter section for wireless equipment
control
Fig. 2: ASK concept for the RF transmitter module
RF Module Specifications
Parameter Value
Frequency of operation 434 MHz
Modulation ASK
Range 9.14 metres
Power Supply 5V (RX)
3V to 12V (TRX)
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60 August 2010 electroni cs for you www. e f y mA g . c o m
sent, it is modulated with carrier signal
(434MHz). This modulated signal is
then transmitted through the antenna.
The waveforms in Fig. 2 depict the
ASK concept. The main specifcations
of the RF module are shown in the
table.
Receiver section. Fig. 3 shows the
block diagram of the receiver section.
The 12V DC supply, used along
with a 5V regulator, can be provided
by a 12V battery or power adaptor.
The RX-434 radio receiver module
receives the ASK signal from TRX-434.
The HT12D decoder demodulates
the received address and data bits.
IC CD4519 is a quadruple two-in-
put multiplexer that selects the appro-
priate data bits to control the devices.
The ULN 2003 relay driver consists
of seven npn Darlington pairs that
feature high-voltage outputs with
common-cathode clamp diodes for
switching the inductive loads. The
collector-current rating of a single Dar-
lington pair is 500 mA.
Circuit description
Transmitter circuit. Fig. 4 shows the
transmitter circuit. The microcontroller
reads the input data from switches S1
through S4 at its Port-2 pins 21 through
24 and displays it on the LCD. Port 3
provides read data to the encoder IC
HT12E at pins 10 through 13). The mi-
crocontroller is programmed to control
input and output data.
When the pushbutton switches
(S1 through S4) are open, logic 0 is
constantly fed to the respective port
pins of the microcontroller. When any
of the buttons is pressed, logic 1 is
fed to the respective port pin of the
microcontroller.
The device control program stored
in the memory of the microcontroller
activates and executes as per the Fig. 3: Block diagram of receiver section for wireless equipment control
Fig. 4: Transmitter circuit
ConstruCtion
electroni cs for you August 2010 61 www. e f y mA g . c o m
functions defned in the program for
respective input switches.
Data inputs AD8 through AD11
(pins 10 through 13) of HT12E are
connected to the microcontroller. Pins
1 through 8 (A0 through A7) of the
IC are address inputs. Shorting the
address pins using switches to either
Vcc or Gnd enables different address
selections for data transmission. Here
we have connected them to 5Vcc. Since
address pins are connected to 5V, the
address is set to 255d (in decimal). If
you were to connect all the address
pins to ground, the address would
be 000d. Thus there are 256 possible
addresses available. So you can set up
switches to control one or more of the
encoder address pins.
Pin 14 is a transmit-enable (TE)
input pin. The encoder will send data
only when pin 14 is connected to
ground. Whenever a button is pressed,
logic 0 is sent to this pin through the
microcontroller, thus activating it and
enabling transmission.
Pin 17 is the data-out (D
out
) pin
that sends a serial stream of pulses
containing the address and data. It is
connected to the data input pin of the
TRX RF module.
The time-out control is set using in-
put keys S1 through S4 to turn on/off
the devices at predetermined time. The
default time for all the devices is 00
seconds. So using up key you can in-
crement time by one second, and using
down key you can decrement time
one second down. At the same time,
the LCD module shows the current
status of increments and decrements.
When the time-out for a device is
set, press ent key
so that the program
control transfers to
the next device for
time-out settings.
In the same way,
the remaining three
time-out settings
must be done be-
fore pressing run
key. When run
key is pressed, it
executes the device
control program
subroutine in the
mi crocont rol l er
and the program
automatically col-
lects the time-out
i nformati on en-
tered by the user and sends the pro-
cessed data to encoder IC HT12E. The
encoder IC sends the data to D
in
(pin
2) of the RF transmitter module. The
data is transmitted by the TRX-434
module to the receiver section through
the antenna.
Receiver circuit. Fig. 5 shows the
receiver circuit. The RF receiver (RX-
434) module can receive the signal
transmitted by the transmitter from a
distance of up to 9 metres (30 feet). The
range can be increased up to 30 metres
using a good antenna.
D
out
pin of RX-434 RF module is
connected to D
in
pin of decoder IC
HT12D (IC4). D
in
pin of IC4 receives
address and data bits serially from
the RF module. Decoder IC4 separates
data and address from the received
information. It accepts data only if the
received address matches with the ad-
dress assigned to encoder IC1 (HT12E).
We have used 1111 as the permanent
address for communication. Pins 1
through 8 of IC4 are address pins and
therefore 256 possible addresses are
available. The address on the encoder
and decoder ICs must match for the
data to be valid.
The HT12D decoder receives serial
addresses and data from the encoder
that are transmitted by a carrier signal
over RF medium. The decoder com-
Fig. 5: Receiver circuit
Fig. 6: Software fow-chart
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62 August 2010 electroni cs for you www. e f y mA g . c o m
Fig. 9: An actual-size, single-side PCB layout of receiver circuit for wireless equipment control
Fig. 10: Component layout for the PCB in Fig. 9
Fig. 7: An actual-size, single-side PCB layout of transmitter circuit for
wireless equipment control
Fig. 8: Component layout for the PCB in Fig. 7
pares the serial input data three times
continuously with its local addresses.
If no error or unmatched codes are
found, the input data codes are decod-
ed and transferred to the output pins.
VT pin (valid transmission) goes high
to indicate a valid transmission. The
HT12D provides four latch-type data
pins whose data remains unchanged
until new data is received.
Data pins D8 through D11 (pins 10
through 13) of the decoder send 4-bit
data to CD4519 multiplexer IC5.
CD4519 multiplexer. This IC pro-
vides four multiplexing circuits with
common select inputs (S
A
and S
B
); each
circuit contains two inputs (An, Bn)
and one output (On). It may be used to
select 4-bit information from one of the
two sources.
There are eight input lines (A0
through A3 and B0 through B3), of
which four (A0 through A3) are per-
manently connected to Vcc through
resistor R19, while the rest four (B0
through B3) are connected to the data
output lines of the decoder (IC4).
The select inputs can be connected
to either Vcc or VT pin (pin 17) for
latch or momentary mode-selection
section. Jumper switch (JS) is used to
select between latch and momentary
operation. When latch mode is se-
lected, data present at the output pins
is latched, i.e., they remain the same
and the respective relay energises
until the next change is made in the
mode selection. When momentary
mode is selected, data present at the
output pins is available as long as VT
pin remains active-high. As soon as VT
pin becomes active-low, the respective
relay de-energises.
The latched output data from mul-
tiplexer CD4519 is fed to relay driver
IC ULN2003, to control the devices
(Device 1 through Device 4) through
the relays (RL1 through RL4). VT pin
is connected to LED4 through IC6 to
ConstruCtion
electroni cs for you August 2010 63 www. e f y mA g . c o m
indicate the status of VT signal when it
is active-high.
software program
The software fowchart programmed
in the microcontroller of the trans-
mitter section is shown in Fig. 6. It is
written in Assembly language and
compiled using ASM51 software to
generate the hex code. The hex pro-
gram can be burnt into the AT89C51
microcontroller by using any standard
programmer available in the market.
We have used TopView programmer
from Frontline Electronics to program
the microcontroller.
The software program is designed
to accept the input from the user as
well as control the devices. It identifes
the key pressed and displays the key
code on the LCD module.
In the program, the LCD module is
initialised frst. As soon as the time-out
is set, all the four devices turn on ini-
tially, then a particular device turns off
at preset time. In this project, the time-
out range is 00 to 99 seconds, which
can be easily modifed to extend the
time duration in the delay subroutine
of Assembly code.
Port 0 is confgured as output port
and interfaced with the RF module
through encoder IC1. Port 1 is used for
LCD interface and Port 2 is used for
the input from push-to-on switches.
Circuit operation
When the system is switched on, the
startup message press any key ap-
pears on the LCD screen. When any key
is pressed by the user, the LCD displays
the message to set time out press ent!.
Pressing ent key displays the follow-
ing messages on the LCD with a cursor
blinking near the frst device D1_T:
D1_T= D2_T=
D3_T= D4_T=
Use up and down keys to set the
time for controlling the devices. The set
time for each device on the LCD screen
looks like this:
D1_T=10 D2_T=20
D3_T=30 D4_T=40
Now press ent key followed by
run key. A device control subroutine
executes and sends the data to the
RF module, which transmits the data
through ANT antenna. You can set
maximum of 99 seconds as the control
time for the device. If you set it to 00,
a particular device is turned on for
infnite time.
Construction
An actual-size, single-side PCB layout
of the transmitter for wireless equip-
ment control using microcontroller
is shown in Fig. 7 and its component
layout in Fig. 8. The actual-size, single-
side PCB layout for the receiver circuit
is shown in Fig. 9 and its component
layout in Fig. 10.
EFY. The source codes of this pro-
ject have been included in this months
EFY-CD and are also available on
www.efymag.com website.
Dr H.N. Pandya is head of Department of Electron-
ics, Dr Anandkumar Atalbihari Bhaskar is a lecturer
and Ms Seema J. Oza is a research scholar in
Department of Electronics at Saurashtra Univer-
sity, Rajkot