Automatic Railway Gate Control System with High Speed Alerting System

The main aim of this project is to operate and control the unmanned railway gate in the proper manner in order to avoid the accidents in the unmanned railway crossing. In a country like ours where there are many unmanned railway crossings, accidents are increasing day by day. These train accidents are due to the absence of human power in the railway. In order to overcome the accidents due to the above problem we have planned to design the project.

Automatic Railway Gate Control System with High Speed Alerting System is an innovative circuit which automatically controls the operation of railway gates detecting the arrival and departure of trains at the gate. It has detectors at the far away distance on the railway track which allows us to know the arrival and departure of the train. These detectors are given to microcontroller which activates the motors which open/close the railway gate correspondingly.

Another feature of this circuit is that it has an intelligent alerting system which detects the speed of the train that is arriving. If the speed is found to be higher than the normal speed, then the microcontroller automatically activates the alarm present at the gate. This alerts the passengers at the railway crossing on the road about this. Also This circuit has the feature for Identification of train from other intruders i.e, animals etc .This can be implemented in manned level crossings also, as manual errors can be eliminated by automation.

Circuit Diagram of Automatic Railway Gate Controller:

Circuit Operation:

The operation of the circuit can be clearly explained as follows. Basically the circuit consists of four IR LED-Photodiode pairs arranged on either side of the gate such that IR LED and photodiodes are on either side of the track as shown in the figure below.

Initially transmitter is continuously transmitting the IR light which is made to fall on the receiver. When the train arrives it cuts the light falling on receiver. Let us assume the train is arriving from left to right, now when the train cuts the 1st sensor pair a counter is activated and when it crosses 2nd sensor pair the counter is stopped. This counter value gives the time period which is used to calculate the velocity of the train.

The sensor2 output is sent to microcontroller which makes the relay activate which causes the gate to be closed. Now when the last carriage of the train cuts the sensor4 microcontroller de-activates the relay and gates are opened.

How does the sensor know the last carriage?

Here as previously mentioned the counter value is used to calculate the velocity of the train, which means that every wheel of the carriage cuts the sensor pair within small fraction of time based on its velocity. After the last carriage is passed there is no obstacle to the sensor pair within that fraction of time hence it knows that the train has left.

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One more feature of this circuit is detecting a train accurately i.e, there may be a chance that some obstacle (for e.g some animal) may cut the sensor then in such a case the counter is made to run for certain period of time (this time period is set considering the possible lowest speed of train) if the obstacle does not cut the 2nd sensor before this predefined time then this obstacle is not considered as train and gates remain opened.

One more advantage of calculating the velocity of train is, if the speed of the train crosses a limit i.e, if it is traveling at an over speed then the passengers are alerted using a by activating a buzzer.

The system basically comprises two IR LED – Photodiode pairs, which are installed on the railway track at about 1 meter apart, with the transmitter and the photodiode of each pair on the opposite sides of the track. The installation is as shown in the block diagram. The system displays the time taken by the train in crossing this distance from one pair to the other with a resolution of 0.01 second from which the speed of the vehicle can be calculated as follows:

Speed (kmph) = Distance/Time

As distance between the sensors is known and constant, the time is counted by the microcontroller and from this information, we can calculate the speed.

This circuit has been designed considering the maximum permissible speed for trains as per the traffic rule.

The microcontroller is used to process the inputs that are provided by the sensors and generate the desired outputs appropriately

Density Based Traffic Signal System using Microcontroller

Nowadays, controlling the traffic becomes major issue because of rapid increase in automobiles and also because of large time delays between traffic lights. So, in order to rectify this problem, we will go for density based traffic lights system. This article explains you how to control the traffic based on density.

In this system, we will use IR sensors to measure the traffic density. We have to arrange one IR sensor for each road; these sensors always sense the traffic on that particular road. All these sensors are interfaced to the microcontroller. Based on these sensors, controller detects the traffic and controls the traffic system.

Density Based Traffic Signal System Circuit Principle:

The main heart of this traffic system is microcontroller. IR sensors are connected to the PORT C (PC0, PC1, PC2, and PC3) of the microcontroller and traffic lights are connected to PORT B and PORT D. If there is a traffic on road then that particular sensor output becomes logic 0 otherwise logic 1. By receiving these IR sensor outputs, we have to write the program to control the traffic system.

Also Read This DTMF Controlled Robot without Microcontroller

If you receive logic 0 from any of these sensors, we have to give the green signal to that particular path and give red signal to all other paths. Here continuously we have to monitor the IR sensors to check for the traffic.

Density Based Traffic Signal System Circuit Diagram:

Circuit Components:

ATmega8 controller

PCB board

IR sensors -4

LED’s-12(4-red,4-green,4-yellow)

12v Battery or adaptor

Serial cable

Connecting wires

Density Based Traffic Light Control System Circuit Design:

This circuit consists of 4 IR sensors, atmega8 microcontroller, 4 traffic lights.

IR transmitter looks like an LED. This IR transmitter always emits IR rays from it. The operating voltage of this IR transmitter is 2 to 3v. These IR (infra red) rays are invisible to the human eye. But we can view these IR rays through camera.

IR receiver receives IR rays that are transmitted by IR transmitter. Normally IR receiver has high resistance in order of mega ohms, when it is receiving IR rays the resistance is very low. The operating voltage of IR receiver also 2 to 3V.

We have to place these IR pair in such a way that when we place an obstacle in front of this IR pair, IR receiver should be able to receive the IR rays. When we give the power, the transmitted IR rays hit the object and reflect back to the IR receiver.

Instead of traffic lights, you can use LEDs (RED, GREEN, YELLOW). In normal traffic system, you have to glow the LEDs on time basis. If the traffic density is high on any particular path, then glows green LED of that particular path and glows the red LEDs for remaining paths.

In normal traffic system, we allow the traffic for a time delay of 1 minute for each path.

The above figure shows the IR sensor circuit. Here 330 ohm resistor is used to drop the voltage otherwise IR transmitter may get damaged. To vary the obstacle sensing distance, we have used a potentiometer. We have taken the ouput from transistor collector. This sensor gives the digital output.

                                               Download Project Code

How to Operate Density based Traffic Signal System Circuit?

Connect 12V battery or adaptor to the development board.

Switch on the supply.

Burn the program to the ATmega8 microcontroller by keeping the programming switch sw2 in program mode.

Connect four IR sensors to PORT C.

Connect LEDs to PORT B and PORT D.

Arrange all this LED’s same as like traffic lights.

Arrange one IR sensor for each road.

Now you can see the normal traffic system based on time basis.

Now if you place any obstacle in front of any IR sensor, then the system allows the traffic of that particular path by glowing GREEN light.

Finally, turn off the board power supply.

Applications of Density Based Traffic Signal System:

This project is mainly used to control the traffic in metropolitan cities.

Limitations of this Circuit: 

IR sensors sometimes may absorb normal light also. As a result, traffic system works in improper way.

IR sensors work only for fewer distances.

We have to arrange IR sensors in accurate manner otherwise they may not detect the traffic density.

Note:

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DTMF Controlled Robot without Microcontroller

DTMF is the acronym for Dual tone modulation frequency. Robotic vehicle based on DTMF technology is explained in this article. Here is a circuit that operates the robot without using a microcontroller. This circuit consists of simple ICs.

When a key is pressed from our mobile, it generates a tone combination of two frequencies from our keypad. In the two frequencies, one is high frequency and another one is low frequency. This frequency can be decoded by the decoder IC into binary sequence.

DTMF Based Robotic Vehicle Circuit Principle:

 DTMF based robotic vehicle circuit consists of DTMF decoder IC, driver IC l293D IC and motors.

DTMF decoder IC used is HT9107B. It has 18 pins. Tone from DTMF encoder is given to the DTMF decoder IC. The decoder IC internally, consists of operational amplifier whose output is given to pre filters to separate low and high frequencies. Then it is passed to code detector circuit and it decodes the incoming tone into 4bits of binary data. This data at the output is directly given to the driver IC to drive the two motors. These motors rotate according to the decoded output.

Also Find  Water Level Indicator with Alarm System

Circuit Diagram of DTMF Controlled Robotic Vehicle without using Microcontroller:

Circuit Components:

DTMF Decoder IC (HT9107B)

Motor Driver IC

Motors

Resistors – R1, R2 & R3

Capacitors – C1 to C4

Crystal Oscillator

DTMF Controlled Robot Circuit Design:

The main components of the circuit are DTMF decoder IC, motor driver IC and motors. The decoder IC used here is HT9107B IC. The second pin of decoder IC is an inverting pin of the operational amplifier.

Tone is applied to the IC through a series of capacitor and resistor. The output of the Op Amp is feed back through GS pin of the IC. An external crystal is connected to the 7th and 8th pins of the IC.

Motor driver IC used is L293D. It has 16 pins. 2, 7, 10, 15 pins are the inputs of motor driver IC connected from output pins of the decoder IC. The output pins are 3, 6, 11, 14. These pins are connected to the two motors of robotic vehicle. 8th pin is connected to the 5v. Vss is the input voltage with which the motors runs. Motors cannot be driven with 5Vof microcontroller. So, a driver IC is used to amplify this voltage. VSS pin provides this voltage.

How DTMF based Robotic Vehicle Circuit Works?

Arrange the robot mechanically i.e. connect the wheels to the motors, place the circuit on the robot with a mobile fixed to it.

• Now press ‘5’ from your mobile, robot starts moving forward.
• Now press ‘0’ from your mobile, robot starts moving backward.
• Now press ‘2’ to rotate the robot in left direction.
• Now press ‘8’ to rotate the robot in right direction.

DTMF Controlled Robotic Vehicle Circuit Applications:

DTMF robot with slight modifications can be used in industrial applications.

DTMF robot with human detector sensor can be used at the time of disasters like earth quake to detect the human under buildings.

DTMF robot with camera can be used in surveillance systems.

Limitations of DTMF Controlled Robotic Vehicle :

DTMF robot may not work properly if it is operated with another mobile when there is no signal.

Mobiles with particular jacks are only used.

Water Level Indicator with Alarm System

This is a simple and very useful circuit to check the water level in a container or a Tank. It gives visual indication at three levels and when the tank is about to overflow then it gives audio alarm. This is a very economical and easy to build project. But please take the help of adults if you are not familiar with soldering iron.

Required Things

Required Tools

Circuit Diagram

Construction and Description:

Paint the rectangular wooden base of the size 8 inches x 6 inches with acrylic color.

If you are not familiar with soldering technique then ask an adult or go to your nearest electronics shop and ask them to assemble the circuit on general purpose board (according to the circuit diagram).

Fix the plastic container on the wooden base (as shown in the picture above).

Fix the battery, buzzer and assembled board on the wooden base with the help of Foam Tape.

Make a probe of an insulating material such as plastic (you can use empty sheel of pen) as shown but ensure that its length is more than the height plastic container.

Put the probe vertically inside the empty plastic container.

Now attach the battery clip to the battery and start filling the water in the container.

As the water crosses each level of the probe in the container, you will notice the corresponding visual indication on the circuit. And in the last level alarm will sound.

After Whole Assembly