Bluetooth Controlled Appliances

Bluetooth Controlled Appliances

     Bluetooth Controlled Appliances is another Senior Year Design Project (Thesis) I’ve helped my friends built. Credits to Team Haagen-Dazs for allowing me to share it here.

     This project aims to control typical home appliances like Curtain, Electric Fan and Light Bulb. A computer is used to control them and the device that serves as their bridge of communication is the bluetooth module specifically EGBT 9830 Bluetooth Module. The Graphical User Interface (GUI) is made from Visual Basic 6 using the serial port plugin which is mscomm. The program only transmits single characters for the microcontroller to read. The project uses Half-Duplex Communication.

SMS Controlled Car Alarm Security System

SMS Controlled Car Alarm Security System

     It’s been awhile that I have last posted my projects here since I have helped my friends build their Senior Year Design Project. Now, it is finally done and I will be so happy to share it here. The project is all about a cellphone that will inform the user through Short Message Service (SMS) when an intruder triggered the alarm. Using the AT Commands the serial communication with the phone and the microcontroller was made possible.

     The project comes into a case but temporarily removed for the presentation to the panel of judges since the case wont fit on the prototype.

     There are two ways of sending and receiving SMS messages: by text mode and by PDU (protocol description unit) mode. The text mode (unavailable on this phone) is just an encoding of the bit stream represented by the PDU mode. The phone used was Sony Ericsson T68i and the only mode supported is PDU mode. It was a headache at first since I can only see hexadecimal figures but as time goes by I got used to it.

Shake Self-balancing and Light Following Robot

Self-balancing and Light Following Robot

     Shake is a robot inspired from a Segway (You can google it if you haven’t heard it yet). He is a self-balancing and light following robot. Most of the balancing robots use Gyrometers or Accelerometers or even both for a very good accuracy but since I don’t have enough funds to have them I decided to use Light Dependent Resistors.

     The concept of its action is the same with the line follower mobile robot. When the light is received by the LDR then it tells the robot that it is near to the floor. Two LDRs are used on its front and back. When the back LDR doesn’t receive any light then the robot will move forward. When the front LDR doesn’t receive any light then the robot will move backward. It is stable when both LDRs are receiving light.

Cruddy V.2 Line Follower Mobile Robot

Cruddy V.2 Line Follower Robot

     This is my 5th robot. He is Cruddy version 2. Still he is a line following robot but has  now abetter circuit design (originally designed by me) and has cool appearance 😀 This project doesn’t have any microcontroller. It is designed through digital logic gates only. I used two Light Dependent Resistors (LDR) as my sensors.

Main components used:
1. LM358
2. 78LS04 / Hex Inverter IC
3. L293D / H-bridge IC

Remote Controlled Surveillance Mobile Robot with IP Cam

Remote Controlled Surveillance Mobile Robot

     The project is built by Team Stark. Gilbert (myself :D) as the leader and my subordinates Martin and Janssen. I divided the tasks in 3 parts. First is the camera control, Log-in database, installer and network setup which was assigned to Martin. The second part was assigned to Janssen and his main tasks are mainly in the mechanical (gears, tracks, etc.) and production of the robot (physical design, mounting, space management, bolts, etc.) making it organized inside and a stunning looking outside. I assigned myself to the last tasks which are designing the circuitries, simulating, programming the microcontroller, programming Visual Basic for serial communication, building PCBs (ironing, etching, slotting, soldering, etc.). With teamwork, cooperation, team handling and good communication we were able to finish the project in less than 2 months.