Project Report

Automatic Room Light Controller with

Bidirectional Visitor Counter
Group#3
Submitted by:
Amber Riaz 2016-EE-02
Muhammad Akram Shahid 2016-EE-05
Muhammad Amir Shareef 2016-EE-21
Mashhood Bin Abdul Mughni 2016-EE-30
Artaza Shafiq 2016-EE-35
Submitted to:
Dr. Abdul Sattar Malik

Department of Electrical Engineering

University College of Engineering &
Technology BZU Multan

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 Table of contents

1 Introduction: ..................................................................................... 3
2 Objectives: ....................................................................................... 3
3 Components ..................................................................................... 3
4 Technical Background: .................................................................... 4
4.1 Arduino UNO board: ............................................................... 4
4.2 Infrared Sensors: ...................................................................... 4
4.3 Liquid Crystal Display: ........................................................... 4
4.4 Relay: ....................................................................................... 5
5 Methodology: ................................................................................... 6
6 Working: .......................................................................................... 6
7 Applications: .................................................................................... 7
8 Advantages: ...................................................................................... 7
9 Disadvantages: ................................................................................. 7
10 Future Work: ................................................................................. 7
11 Conclusion: ................................................................................... 7
12 References: .................................................................................... 8

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1 Introduction:
The Project “Automatic Room light controller
with bidirectional visitor counter” is a reliable circuit that performs
the task of counting the number of persons entering in a room, hall,
cinema, mall etc. It increments the counter when a person enters in
a desired place and decrements it when a person leaves that place.
The total number of persons are displayed on the LCD screen. This
circuit also turns off the lights automatically if the counter indicates
no person in the room. The whole project will be implemented by
using a controller known as Arduino UNO. Two Infrared sensors will
be used as input to Arduino which will detect any interruption at the
entrance and increase or decrease the counter. The corresponding
results will be displayed on LCD and will also be used for actuating
the lights by relay mechanism.

2 Objectives:
1. To count the number of persons present at a particular location.
2. Energy saving by turning off the excessive lights.

3 Components
Components used for the construction of this project are as follows;

1. Arduino UNO
2. Relay (5V)
3. Resistors
4. IR Sensor module
5. 16*2 LCD display
6. Bread Board
7. Connecting Wires
8. Led
9. BC547 Transistor

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4 Technical Background:
4.1 Arduino UNO board:
The Arduino UNO is an open-source microcontroller board based
on the Microchip ATmega328P microcontroller and developed
by Arduino.cc. The board is equipped with sets of digital and
analog input/output (I/O) pins that may be interfaced to various
expansion boards (shields) and other circuits. The board has 14
Digital pins, 6 Analog pins, and programmable with the Arduino
IDE (Integrated Development Environment) via a type B USB
cable. It can be powered by a USB cable or by an external 9 volt
battery, though it accepts voltages between 7 and 20 volts.[3]

4.2 Infrared Sensors:

Infrared sensor consists of two parts:
emitter and a detector. The emitter is an IR LED (Light Emitting Diode)
and the detector is an IR photodiode which senses IR light of the
same wavelength as that emitted by the IR LED. When IR light falls on
the photodiode, its resistance and hence output voltage changes.
This is the basic working principle of IR sensor.[2]

4.3 Liquid Crystal Display:

Liquid Crystal Display screen is an
electronic display module and find a wide range of applications. A
16x2 LCD display is very basic module and is very commonly used in
various devices and circuits. These modules are preferred over seven
segments and other multi segment LEDs. The reasons being: LCDs are
economical; easily programmable; have no limitation of displaying
special & even custom characters (unlike in seven segments),
animations and so on. A 16x2 LCD means it can display 16 characters
per line and there are 2 such lines. In this LCD each character is
displayed in 5x7 pixel matrix. This LCD has two registers, namely,
Command and Data. The command register stores the command
instructions given to the LCD. A command is an

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instruction given to LCD to do a predefined task like initializing it,
clearing its screen, setting the cursor position, controlling display etc.
The data register stores the data to be displayed on the LCD. The data
is the ASCII value of the character to be displayed on the LCD. [1]

4.4 Relay:
The relay which we will use is SRD-05VDC-SL-C. It is very
popular relay among Arduino and DIY electronics hobbyists.This relay
has 5 pins. 2 for the coil. Middle one is COM (common) and the rest of
the two are called NO (Normally Open) and NC (Normally Close). When
current flows through the coil of the relay, a magnetic field is created
that causes a ferrous armature to move, either making or breaking an
electrical connection. When the electromagnet is energized the NO is
the one which is on and NC is the one which is off. When the coil is
de-energized the electromagnetic force disappears and the armature
moves back to the original position turning on the NC contact. The
closing and releasing of the contacts

Figure 1: Relay mechanism

results in powering on and off of the circuits.[4]

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5 Methodology:
Proposed system architecture is shown in Figure 1.1

Figure 2 Methodology Implemented

6 Working:
1) Two IR sensors will be used. Both will be present perpendicular
to the gate entrance. IR sensors will generate a signal when they
found an interruption. The timing difference of both
signals(generated by two IR’s) will dictate the increment or
decrement for the counter. If first IR gives signal earlier than
second than counter is incremented by one and vice versa.
2) Arduino UNO will be used as a controller and counts
the number of persons and display it on LCD.
3) Finally, if counter is decremented to zero than Arduino
will turn off the LED by using a relay mechanism and if
it is incremented to 1 than it turns on the LED.
4) The count will become zero when the door is locked
from outside whether the counter is zero or not.

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7 Applications:
1) At homes, offices etc. to turn off the excessive
lights when nobody is present in the room.

8 Advantages:
1. Economical.
2. Easy to use.
3. Much Efficient for counting people at homes, offices.
4. Can be used for automatic light switching.

9 Disadvantages:
1. Used only when one person cuts the rays of sensor
hence cannot be used when two or more persons cross
the door simultaneously due to sensor limitations.
2. When nobody is inside the room and the counter is
greater than zero due to some error, lights will remain
on unless or until door is locked from outside.

10 Future Work:
1. Thermal imaging sensor can be added to supplement the
sensor limitations such that it will turn off the lights if nobody is
present in the room whether the count is zero or not.
2. Wireless connectivity can be added by
connecting WIFI module.

11 Conclusion:
This project uses low cost off the shelf components, and is based
on Arduino platform which is FOSS (Free Open Source Software).
So the overall implementation cost is very cheap and is affordable
by a common person. This low cost system is designed to improve
the living standard and complexity of visitors counting.

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12References:
1) Subhankar Chattoraj, Aditya Chakraborty, “
Bidirectional Visitor Counter with Automatic Room
Light Controller and Arduino as the master controller,”
International Journal of Scientific and Research
Publications, vol. 6, no. 7, pp. 357– 359,July 2016.
2) R. Shah, D. Rasaily, T. R. Wangchuk, R. Chettri, and T.
C. Bhutia, “Automatic Room Light Controller with
Visitor Counter Desgined using Microcontroller,”
International Journal of Engineering Trends and
Technology, vol. 33, no. 8, pp. 378– 380, 2016.
3) Arduino Uno,” Wikipedia, 07-Oct-2018. [Online].
Available: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arduino_Uno.
[Accessed: 18-Nov-2018].
4) Instructables, “Driving a Relay With an
Arduino,” Instructables.com, 03-Apr-2018. [Online].
Available: https://www.instructables.com/id/Driving-a-
Relay-With-an-Arduino/. [Accessed: 18-Nov-2018].