Bonfring International Journal of Power Systems and Integrated Circuits, Vol. 2, No.

3, September 2012 18

Automatic Gas Valve Control System using

Arduino Hardware
T.K. Sethuramalingam and M. Karthighairasan
Abstract--- In this paper, the automatic gas valve control Arduino hardware is programmed with the help of a
system is designed using arduino hardware. Arduino is an wring-dependent language (syntax + libraries), comparable
open hardware platform that provides a rapid prototype to C++ with some simplifications and adaptations, and a
development. A servomotor is fitted to a gas valve. Four processing-dependent IDE.
control positions are carried out by the module, two main
The Uno is different from all previous boards in that it
positions are used to open or close the valve. The valve does not employ the FTDI USB-to-serial driver chip. As an
opens at 90° and closes to 0°. This library allows an alternative, it features the Atmega16U2 (Atmega8U2 up to
Arduino board to control RC (hobby) servo motors. Servos
version R2) programmed as a USB-to-serial converter.
have integrated gears and a shaft that can be precisely
“Uno” represents one in Italian and is named to mark the
controlled.
forthcoming release of Arduino 1.0. The Uno and version
Keywords--- Arduino, Servomotor, Integrated Gears, 1.0 will be the reference versions of Arduino, moving
Shafts forward. The Uno is the most recent in a series of USB
Arduino boards, and the reference model for the Arduino
platform.
I. INTRODUCTION
III. ARDUINO HARDWARE
A RDUINO is an open hardware platform which is a
portion of the automatic control for laboratory
sterilization progression. Sterilization is a familiar practice
in biological laboratories and it is defined as a development
of microbial grown control, concerning the overall
annihilation of any microorganism on all objects. Diverse
techniques exploit heat as a method to demolish
microorganisms. These are referred as thermal techniques.
Two main techniques are moist heating and dry heating.
Moist heating makes use of water steam. This module is
exploited for controlling the flame for producing heat.

II. ARDUINO MICROCONTROLLER

The Arduino Uno is a microcontroller board depending
on the ATmega328. It includes 14 digital input/output pins
(out of which 6 can be exploited as PWM outputs), 6 analog
inputs, a 16 MHz crystal oscillator, a USB connection, a
power jack, an ICSP header and the last one is a reset Figure 1: Arduino Uno schematic diagram
button. It includes the most necessary things which are An Arduino board comprises of an 8-bit Atmel AVR
essential to support the microcontroller; basically attach it to microcontroller with constituents entirely to assist
a computer with a USB cable or power it with an AC-to-DC programming and integration into other circuits. A
adapter or battery to get started. significant characteristic of the Arduino is the standard
technique that connectors are uncovered, permitting the
Arduino is an open - source single board microcontroller, CPU board to be connected to a range of interchangeable
intended to formulate a process of exploiting electronics in add-on modules (known as shields). Official Arduino have
multidisciplinary projects more accessible. employed the mega AVR series of chips, particularly the
The hardware comprises of a simple open hardware ATmega8, ATmega168, ATmega328 and ATmega1280. A
devise for the Arduino board with an Atmel processor and handful of other processor has been utilized by Arduino
on-board I/O support. The software comprises of a standard compatibles.
programming language and also the boot loader that runs on
the board.

T.K. Sethuramalingam, M.Tech (Embedded Systems) Final year,

Department of Electronics & Communication Engineering, PRIST
University, Trichy Campus, Tamilnadu, India. E-mail:
[email protected]
M. Karthighairasan, Assistant Professor and Head, Department of
Electronics & Communication Engineering, PRIST University, Trichy
Campus, Tamilnadu, India. E-mail: [email protected]

DOI: 10.9756/BIJPSIC.10001

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Bonfring International Journal of Power Systems and Integrated Circuits, Vol. 2, No. 3, September 2012 19

mode discontinues the CPU and the entire I/O modules

excluding asynchronous timer and ADC, to reduce
switching noise throughout ADC conversions. In Standby
mode, the crystal/resonator Oscillator is running at the same
time the remaining device is sleeping. This facilitates very
fast start-up integrated with low-power consumption.
The device is constructed with the help of Atmel’s high
density non-volatile memory technology. The Flash
Program memory can be reprogrammed In-System through
an SPI serial interface, by a traditional non-volatile memory
programmer, or by an On-chip boot program running on the
AVR core. The boot program can employ any interface to
download the application program in the Application Flash
Figure 2: Arduino Uno Hardware memory. Software in the Boot Flash Section will prolong to
run at the same time the Application Flash Section is
The majority of the boards incorporate a 5 volt linear updated, providing true Read-While-Write operation. By
regulator and a 16 MHZ crystal oscillator (or ceramic integrating an 8-bit RISC CPU with In-System Self-
resonator in a few variants), even though certain designs Programmable Flash on a monolithic chip, the Atmel
such as the Lily pad run at 8 MHZ and dispense with the ATMEGA328 is a dominant microcontroller that offers an
onboard voltage regulator because of particular form-factor extremely-flexible and cost-effective solution to several
limitations. In addition, an Arduino microcontroller is pre- embedded control applications.
programmed with a boot loader that simplifies uploading of The ATMEGA328 AVR is supported with a complete
programs to the on-chip flash memory, evaluated with other suite of program and system development tools, together
devices that characteristically require an external chip with C compilers, macro assemblers, program
programmer. debugger/simulators, In-Circuit Emulators, and evaluation
At an intangible level, when exploiting the Arduino kits.
software stack, the entire boards are programmed over an This set of connections has other implications. When the
RS-232 serial connection, however the method this is Uno is linked to either a computer running Mac OS X or
implemented differs by hardware version. Serial Arduino LINUX, it resets each time a connection is made to it from
boards include an uncomplicated inverter circuit to software (via USB). For the following half-second or so, the
exchange between RS-232 level and TTL level signals. boot loader is running on the Uno. At the same time it is
Current Arduino boards are programmed by means of USB, programmed to disregard distorted data (i.e. everything
implemented using USB-to-serial adapter chips, for besides an upload of new code), it will break up the initial
instance, the FTDI FT232. A few variants, such as the few bytes of data receives one-time configuration or
Arduino mini and the unofficial board uno, employ a additional data when it starts initially, make sure that the
detectable USB-to-serial adapter board or cable, Bluetooth software with which it communicate waits a second after
or other techniques. When exploited with conventional opening the connection and before sending this data.
microcontroller tools in place of the Arduino IDE, standard
AVR ISP programming is employed. The Arduino board The Uno includes a trace that can be cut to immobilize
exposes most of the microcontroller’s I/O pins for use by the auto-reset. The pads on either side of the trace can be
other circuits. soldered jointly to re-enable it. It’s labelled “RESET-EN”. It
is also possible to disable the auto-reset by connecting a 110
IV. FEATURES OF ATMEGA328 ohm resistor from 5V to the reset line.
The controller comprises of 8K bytes of In-System V. GAS VALVE CONTROL MODULE
Programmable Flash with Read-While-Write capabilities,
512 bytes of EEPROM, 1K byte of SRAM, 23 universal A servomotor fixed to a gas valve. Four control positions
purpose I/O lines, 32 common purpose working registers, 3 are carried out by the module, two major positions are
flexible Timer/Counters with balance modes, internal and exploited to open or close the valve (Open at 90° and close
external interrupts, a serial programmable USART, a byte to 0°).
oriented Two-wire Serial Interface, a 6-channel ADC (eight This library allows an Arduino board to manage RC
channels in TQFP and QFN/MLF packages) with 10-bit (hobby) servo motors. Servos have incorporated gears and a
accuracy, a programmable Watchdog Timer with Internal shaft that can be accurately controlled. Standard servos
Oscillator, an SPI serial port and 5 software adjustable permit the shaft to be positioned at different angles,
power saving modes. The idle mode discontinue the CPU typically between 0 and 180 degrees. Uninterrupted rotation
while permitting the SRAM, Timer/Counters, SPI port and servos permit the rotation of the shaft to be set to different
suspend system to continue functioning. speeds.
The power down mode accumulates the register contents The Servo library supports up to 12 motors on most
but freezes the Oscillator, immobilizing all other chip Arduino boards and 48 on the Arduino Mega. On boards
functions until the next Interrupt or Hardware Reset. In excluding the Mega, make use of the library disables analog
Power-save mode, the asynchronous timer continues to run, Write() (PWM) functionality on pins 9 and 10, whether or
permitting the user to continue a timer base at the same time not there is a Servo on those pins. On the Mega, up to 12
the rest of the device is sleeping. The ADC Noise Reduction servos can be exploited without interfering with PWM

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Bonfring International Journal of Power Systems and Integrated Circuits, Vol. 2, No. 3, September 2012 20

functionality; exploitation of 12 to 23 motors will Arduino software and selecting the Preferences window.
immobilize PWM on pins 11 and 12. Adjacent to the editor language there is a dropdown menu of
currently supported languages. The desired language can be
chosen from the menu and restart the software to make use
of the preferred language. If the desired language is not
supported, the IDE will default to English.
The Arduino can return to its normal setting depending
on the operating system by selecting System Default from
the Editor Language drop-down. This setting will
commence only after restarting the Arduino software. In the
same way, after changing the operating system’s settings,
the Arduino software must be restarted to update it to the
latest default language.
B. Writing Sketches
Software is written using Arduino which are called as
sketches. These sketches are written in the text editor.
Sketches are saved with the file extension as .ino. It has
options for cutting/pasting and for searching/replacing text.
The message area provides feedback at the time of saving
and exporting and also displays errors. The console shows
text output by the Arduino environment together with
complete error messages and additional information. The
Figure 3: Servo motor interfacing using arduino bottom right-hand corner of the window shows the existing
board and serial port. The toolbar button permits to confirm
Servo motors consists of three wires: power, ground and and upload programs, create, open and save sketches and
signal. In general, the power wire is red in colour and open the serial monitor.
supposed to be connected to the 5V pin on the Arduino
board. The ground wire is characteristically black or brown C. Sketchbook
and must be connected to a ground pin on the Arduino The Arduino environment employs the idea of a
board. The signal pin is normally yellow or orange and sketchbook - a standard place to accumulate the programs
should be connected to pin 9 on the Arduino board. (or sketches). The sketches in sketchbook can be initialized
The potentiometer is supposed to be wired in order that from the File > Sketchbook menu or from the Open button
its two outer pins are connected to power (+5V) and ground, on the toolbar. The initial time while running the Arduino
and its center pin is connected to analog input 0 on the software, it will automatically generate a directory for the
Arduino. sketchbook. The location of the sketchbook can be viewed
or modified with the assistance of Preferences dialog.
D. Libraries
Libraries offer additional functionality for use in
sketches, for instance, working with hardware or
manipulating data. In order to use a library in sketch, it is
necessary to select it from the Sketch > Import Library
menu. This will introduce one or more #include statements
at the beginning of the sketch and compile the library with
the sketch. Since the libraries are uploaded to the board with
the sketch, they enhance the quantity of space it takes up.
When a sketch no longer requires a library, just remove its
#include statements from the top of the code.

Figure 4: Servo Motor Connection Diagram VII. CONCLUSION

In this paper, the gas valve open and close position was
VI. ARDUINO DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT effectively implemented. Moreover, this module will be
The Arduino development environment comprises of a implemented in the automatic control for laboratory
text editor for writing code, a message area, a text console, a sterilization process.
toolbar with buttons for frequent functions and a sequence
of menus. It attaches to the Arduino hardware to upload REFERENCES
programs and communicate with them. [1] Arizaga, J.A. de la Calleja, J. ; Hernandez, R. ; Benitez, A. Univ.
Politec. de Puebla, Puebla, Mexico, Automatic Control for Laboratory
A. Language Editor Sterilization Process based on Arduino Hardware, 22nd International
Conference on Electrical Communications and Computers
The Arduino 1.0.1 software atmosphere has been (CONIELECOMP), 2012 pg. 130 - 133
interpreted into 30+ different languages. In normal case, the [2] Zualkernan, I.A. InfoCoral: Open-Source Hardware for Low-Cost,
IDE loads in the language chosen by our operating system. High-Density Concurrent Simple Response Ubiquitous Systems; 2011
The language can be manually adjusted by starting the

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Bonfring International Journal of Power Systems and Integrated Circuits, Vol. 2, No. 3, September 2012 21

11th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Learning

Technologies (ICALT), Page(s): 638 - 639
[3] Al-Kuwari, A.M.A.H.; Ortega-Sanchez, C.; Sharif, A.; Potdar, V.User
friendly smart home infrastructure: BeeHouse; 2011 Proceedings of
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T.K. Sethuramalingam, This author was born in

Tamil Nadu, India, in 1981 and received the B.Sc.
degree from the Manonmaniam Sundaranar
University, India, in 2001. Further he received his
M.Sc. and M.Phil. degrees from Bharathidasan
University, India, in 2003 and 2005. He is currently
pursuing his M.Tech project work under the guidance
of Mr. M.Karthighairasan. He visited foreign
countries and presented his research publications. He
is a Member in IEEE, ISSS, IACSIT, IETE, ISTE.His research interests and
publications have been in the areas of Embedded systems, VLSI design and
MEMS.

M. Karthighairasan, This author was born in Tamil

Nadu, India, in 1975. He received his B.E. (Electronics
and Communication) in 2002 from Regional
Engineering College, Tiruchirappalli. Further he
received his M.Tech. (Advanced Communication
Systems) in 2005 from Shanmugha Arts, Science, and
Technology & Research Academy (SASTRA
University) Thanjavur, India. Currently he is working
as Assistant Professor and Head in Department of
Electronics and Communication Engineering at PRIST University,
Tiruchirappalli Campus, Tiruchirappalli, India He has more than 7 years of
teaching experience. His research interests and publications have been in
the areas of Satellite and Wireless Communications.

ISSN 2277-5072 | © 2012 Bonfring