Cytron Technical Forum

Hi,
I'm doing my pre-FYP this semester. Title " Office Lighting Monitoring System". Any suggestion for the hardware part from you guys? Can you recommend what sensor I can implement in my project. Currently I'm using SK40C with PIC18F4550. Any tutorial related to my topic? Thanks a lot in advance.

Hi,
I'm doing my pre-FYP this semester. Title " Office Lighting Monitoring System". Any suggestion for the hardware part from you guys? Can you recommend what sensor I can implement in my project. Currently I'm using SK40C with PIC18F4550. Any tutorial related to my topic? Thanks a lot in advance.

Light Monitoring? Just use LDR, simple.

AllesonBong WROTE:Hi,
I'm doing my pre-FYP this semester. Title " Office Lighting Monitoring System". Any suggestion for the hardware part from you guys? Can you recommend what sensor I can implement in my project. Currently I'm using SK40C with PIC18F4550. Any tutorial related to my topic? Thanks a lot in advance.

" Office Lighting Monitoring System" is a very general subject. You need to be more specific so people can help you. We dont know "What" and "Why" is your purpose to monitor the office lighting. Was it to save electricity costs or you want to turn on the lighting using touch sensor or sound.

Allen

ABSF WROTE:

AllesonBong WROTE:Hi,
I'm doing my pre-FYP this semester. Title " Office Lighting Monitoring System". Any suggestion for the hardware part from you guys? Can you recommend what sensor I can implement in my project. Currently I'm using SK40C with PIC18F4550. Any tutorial related to my topic? Thanks a lot in advance.

" Office Lighting Monitoring System" is a very general subject. You need to be more specific so people can help you. We dont know "What" and "Why" is your purpose to monitor the office lighting. Was it to save electricity costs or you want to turn on the lighting using touch sensor or sound.

Allen

Thanks for the reply. The main objective is to monitor the usage of lighting in an office. I'm struggling finding what is the best way to monitor a lighting system. I've done some research. There is the simple way and the complicated way. The simple way is to use only LED to indicate the light in the office is turned on. Of course the LED is connected to the LDR sensor circuit. But what is the point using PIC18F4550. So i'm using the PIC and LDR, and creating the GUI using VB2008. Any advise on how to create the sensor circuit using PIC18F4550? The sensor circuit supposed to send info to GUI which is the monitoring system, through the PIC and SK40C. The purpose of the sensor is not to turn the light on but just to detect the light is on. Just asking for some advise and ideas..thanks

Create LDR sensor to PIC18F4550?
LDR sensor is resistance change, so just add another resistor to do Voltage Divider. It's not building sensor for PIC18F4550, that is general for all microcontroller that can read analog voltage.

GUI for the sensor monitoring.
You can use UART transmission. You connect PIC with USB-to-UART and connect to Visual Basic.

1. Create a voltage divider, use 10kohm.
2. Read the analog value.
3. Sent data to PC using UART to USB.
4. Visual Basic display the data.
Done!

How many LDR is used?

Idris WROTE:1. Create a voltage divider, use 10kohm.
2. Read the analog value.
3. Sent data to PC using UART to USB.
4. Visual Basic display the data.
Done!

How many LDR is used?

Thanks....For the moment I use only 3 LDRs..what do you have in mind? I would like to hear it

AllesonBong WROTE:For the moment I use only 3 LDRs..what do you have in mind? I would like to hear it

Only 3 LDRs ? Should be a piece of cake.

I've just started a similar project that monitors 16x 24V 48W dc lamps used in a boat. I use 0.1 ohm in series with the lamp to drop 0.2V and use that as an input for my PIC. As my PIC only has 8 ADC, I have to use multiplexers to combine 4 inputs to one output and an op-amp to amplify 0.2V to something higher before entering the ADC.

I dont need GUI to display the activities. Just a front panel with LED and push bottons controlled by a second PIC. The 2 PICs would talk to each other using UART interface. Have you started with the LDR and writing programs for PC GUI or the C programs for the PIC? You can always simulate the PIC part on proteus. The Proteus is quite powerful, it has a UART terminal built-in and can be called out to test the PIC UART functions.

Allen

ABSF WROTE:I've just started a similar project that monitors 16x 24V 48W dc lamps used in a boat. I use 0.1 ohm in series with the lamp to drop 0.2V and use that as an input for my PIC. As my PIC only has 8 ADC, I have to use multiplexers to combine 4 inputs to one output and an op-amp to amplify 0.2V to something higher before entering the ADC.

I dont need GUI to display the activities. Just a front panel with LED and push bottons controlled by a second PIC. The 2 PICs would talk to each other using UART interface. Have you started with the LDR and writing programs for PC GUI or the C programs for the PIC? You can always simulate the PIC part on proteus. The Proteus is quite powerful, it has a UART terminal built-in and can be called out to test the PIC UART functions.
Allen

Sound interesting

ABSF WROTE:

AllesonBong WROTE:For the moment I use only 3 LDRs..what do you have in mind? I would like to hear it

Only 3 LDRs ? Should be a piece of cake.

I've just started a similar project that monitors 16x 24V 48W dc lamps used in a boat. I use 0.1 ohm in series with the lamp to drop 0.2V and use that as an input for my PIC. As my PIC only has 8 ADC, I have to use multiplexers to combine 4 inputs to one output and an op-amp to amplify 0.2V to something higher before entering the ADC.

I dont need GUI to display the activities. Just a front panel with LED and push bottons controlled by a second PIC. The 2 PICs would talk to each other using UART interface. Have you started with the LDR and writing programs for PC GUI or the C programs for the PIC? You can always simulate the PIC part on proteus. The Proteus is quite powerful, it has a UART terminal built-in and can be called out to test the PIC UART functions.

Allen

Wow!.. waiting to see more for this...