Password Based Circuit Breaker

Our system proposes a password based circuit breaker system. Here we connect the circuit
with a keypad through which we enter the password. There is a substantial increase in the
number of fatal accidents involving line men due to electric shocks resulting from the lack of
coordination between maintenance staff and the electric substation staff.

This system provides a solution to this problem, to ensure there are no such incidents
that endanger the life of line men. Here the control of the circuit is provided at the substation. A
circuit breaker is used along with a keypad. The line man can enter the password to switch OFF
the circuit. He may now safely work out the repairs and may return to the substation to switch
ON the circuit. He again needs to enter the password in order to switch ON the circuit.

Since the control to switch ON/OFF the circuit lies with the lineman himself there is no chance of
accidents. The system uses an AVR microcontroller in order to tally password and a matrix
keypad to take password input. The system may be later enhanced by integrating with an
EEPROM for password changing as and when needed.

MICROCONTROLLER INTERFACE
AVR is an 8-bit CMOS micro controller. Its internal circuitry reducing the need for external
components, thus reducing the cost and power consumption and enhancing the system
reliability. The micro controller has four ports namely port 0, 1, and 3. Out of the available 24 bi-
directional I/O pins are used for keypad, LCD, relay interfacing
The password is store in the internal EPROM memory. The memory can be programmed and
read by the micro controller. Which activates an output when the correct access code has been
entered on a keypad. This code consists of four digits in the range 0 to 9. The code can be
changed by the user and is also remembered when the power is off.

MCU Clock
A 16 MHz crystal provides accurate timing and an easily divisible clock source for the internal
hardware timers. This high frequency clock source is used to control the sequencing of CPU
instruction

KEYBOARD.
The 12-key matrix keyboard comprises 12 tactile pushbutton switches arranged in four rows and
three columns as shown in Fig. Data is entered via this keyboard.

Ports 0 of the micro controller are bi-directional I/O ports. Three lines of Port 0 are used as the
output-scan lines and four lines of Port 0 are used as the input sense lines. Port 0 of micro
controller need for connecting external pull-up resistors P0.0 to P0.2 as output drivers from
shorting together when two keys of the same row are inadvertently pressed simultaneously. In
the scanning routine, initially all the scan lines are made low and it is checked whether all the
keys are in released state. When any key is pressed, one of the sense lines becomes low. Now
each scan line is made low while keeping the remaining scan lines in high state. After making a
scan line low, the status of the sense lines is read. If any of the sense lines is found low, it
means that a key at the inter section of the current scan line and the low sense line has been
pressed. If no key is found to be pressed, the next scan line is made low and again scan lines
are checked for low state. This way all the twelve Keys are checked for any pressed key by the
micro controller. Since mechanical tactile switch keys are used, pressing of a single key may be
considered by the micro controller as pressing of many keys due to the bouncing of the keys. To
avoid this, the processor is made to wait up to a debounce delay of 10 ms during the pressing or
releasing of a key. Within this debounce delay, all the bounces get settled out, thus debouncing
the key.

LCD INTERFACE
The dot-matrix liquid crystal display controller and driver LSI displays alphanumeric, characters,
and symbols. It can be configured to drive a dot-matrix liquid crystal display under the control of
a 4 or 8-bit microprocessor. Since all the functions such as display RAM, character generator,
and liquid crystal driver, required for driving a dot-matrix liquid crystal display are internally
provided on one chip, a minimal system can be interfaced with this controller/driver. A single
HD44780U can display up to two 8-character lines (16 x 2).

Data transfer between the MCU and the LCD module will occur in the 4-bit mode. The R/W pin
(5) of the LCD module is permanently grounded as there won’t be any data read from the LCD
module. MCU port pin RC0 ~ RC3 (Pin no 11 to 14) serves the 4-bit data lines (D4-D7, pins 11-
14) of the LCD module. Control lines, RS and E, are connected to RC4 and RC5. Thus,
altogether 6 I/O pins of the microcontrollers are used by the LCD module. The contrast
adjustment is done with a 20K preset (potentiometer) as shown below. If your LCD module has
backlight LED, use a 22Ω resistance in series with the pin 15 or 16 to limit the current through
the LED. The detail of the circuit diagram is shown below.

RELAY INTERFACE
A single pole dabble throw (SPDT) relay is connected to port RB0 of the micro controller
through a driver transistor (Q1 ~ Q4). The relay requires 12 volts at a current of around 100 ma,
which cannot provided by the micro controller. So the driver transistor is added. The relay is
used to operate external electronic lock, or any other electrical device ETC. Normally the relay
remains off. As soon as pin of the micro controller goes high, the relay operates. When the relay
operates and releases. Diode D6 is the standard diode on a mechanical relay to prevent back
EMF from damaging Q2 when the relay releases. LED L2 indicates relay is operated. LED has a
current limiting resistor in series. The LED / resistor combination is simply in parallel with the
relay

HOW to Connect Load with Relay?

The output of the projects is controlled by a relay, allowing any load until 230V AC / 3 Amp. as
maximum consumption. The relay has 3 output terminals the normally open at quiescent (NO),
the normally closed at quiescent (NC) and the common. The operating of this mechanism is the
same as a switch with two (2) terminals NO and common, if you wish that the output will be
activated during the timer, or between the NC and the common to obtain the reverse operating.
In the drawing, you could appreciate the typical connection for a devices operating at 12 VDC
and to operate at 230 VAC.
When the project is working and according to its load, it could happen an incorrect operating of
the output. If it is the case, you have to install a circuit between 2 relay's contacts used for the
connection. See the drawing map.

Power supply
The power supply circuit. It’s based on 3 terminal voltage regulators, which provide the required
regulated +5V and unregulated +12V.
Power is deliver initially from standard 12V AC/DC adapter or 12V_500ma Transformer. This is
fed to bridge rectifier (Diode D1 ~ 4) the output of which is then filtered using 1000uf electrolytic
capacitor and fed to U4 (voltage regulator). U4 +5V output powers the micro controller and other
logic circuitry. LED L1 and its associate 1K current limiting resistors provide power indication.
The unregulated voltage of approximately 12V is required for relay, circuit

PART EXPLANATION
ATMEGA328 Microcontroller
Introduction to ATmega328. ATmega-328 is basically an Advanced Virtual RISC (AVR) micro-
controller. It supports the data up to eight (8) bits. ATmega-328 has 32KB internal builtin
memory. This micro-controller has a lot of other characteristics. You should also have a look at
Introduction to PIC16F877a (it’s a PIC Microcontroller) and then compare functions of these two
Microcontrollers.

ATmega 328 has 1KB Electrically Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory (EEPROM). This
property shows if the electric supply supplied to the micro-controller is removed, even then it
can store the data and can provide results after providing it with the electric supply. Moreover,
ATmega-328 has 2KB Static Random Access Memory (SRAM). Other characteristics will be
explained later. ATmega 328 has several different features which make it the most popular
device in today’s market. These features consist of advanced RISC architecture, good
performance, low power consumption, real timer counter having separate oscillator, 6 PWM
pins, programmable Serial USART, programming lock for software security, throughput up to 20
MIPS etc. ATmega-328 is mostly used in Arduino. The further details about ATmega 328 will be
given later in this section.

LM7805 (3 TERMINAL VOLTAGE REGULATER)

This is used to make the stable voltage of +5V for circuits. The LM7805 is three terminal
positive regulators are available in the TO-220 - package and with several fixed output voltages,
making them useful in a wide range of applications. Each type employs internal current limiting,
thermal shut down and safe operating area protection, making it essentially indestructible. If
adequate heat sinking is provided, they can deliver over 1A output current. Although designed
primarily as fixed voltage regulators, More information please refer Data sheet 0f LM7805

Crystal oscillator
A crystal oscillator is an electronic circuit that uses the mechanical resonance of a vibrating
crystal of piezoelectric material to create an electrical signal with a very precise frequency. This
frequency is commonly used to keep track of time (as in quartz wristwatches), to provide a
stable clock signal for digital integrated circuits, and to stabilize frequencies for radio
transmitters/receivers.
16 x 2 LCD Modules
HD44780 based LCD displays are very popular among hobbyists because they are cheap and
they can display characters. Besides they are very easy to interface with microcontrollers and
most of the present day high-level compilers have in-built library routines for them. The interface
requires 6 I/O lines of the microcontroller: 4 data lines and 2 control lines.

A] Required Theory
All HD44780 based character LCD displays are connected through 14 pins: 8 data pins (D0-
D7), 3 control pins (RS, E, R/W), and three power lines (Vdd, Vss, Vee). Some LCDs have LED
backlight feature that helps to read the data on the display during low illumination conditions. So
they have two additional connections (LED+ and LED-), making altogether 16 pin. A 16-pin LCD
module with its pin diagraam is shown below.

B] Control pins
The control pin RS determines if the data transfer between the LCD module and an external
microcontroller are actual character data or command/status. When the microcontroller needs to
send commands to LCD or to read the LCD status, it must be pulled low. Similarly, this must be
pulled high if character data is to be sent to and from the LCD module.

The direction of data transfer is controlled by the R/W pin. If it is pulled Low, the commands or
character data is written to the LCD module. And, when it is pulled high, the character data or
status information from the LCD registers is read. Here, we will use one way data transfer, i.e.,
from microcontroller to LCD module, so the R/W pin will be grounded permanently.
The enable pin (E) initiates the actual data transfer. When writing to the LCD display, the data is
transferred only on the high to low transition of the E pin.
C] Power supply pins
Although most of the LCD module data sheets recommend +5V DC. Supply for operation, some
LCDs may work well for a wider range (3.0 to 5.5 V). The Vdd pin should be connected to the
positive power supply and Vss to ground. Pin 3 is Vee, which is used to adjust the contrast of
the display. In most of the cases, this pin is connected to a voltage between 0 and 2V by using a
preset potentiometer.

D] Data pins
Pins 7 to 14 are data lines (D0-D7). Data transfer to and from the display can be achieved either
in 8-bit or 4-bit mode. The 8-bit mode uses all eight data lines to transfer a byte, whereas, in a
4-bit mode, a byte is transferred as two 4-bit nibbles. In the later case, only the upper 4 data
lines (D4-D7) are used. This technique is beneficial as this saves 4 input/output pins of
microcontroller. We will use the 4-bit mode.

SPDT RELAY – 12V

It closes the voltage less point of contact while the circuits control works to control the
equipment outside. The relay takes advantage of the fact that when electricity flows through a
coil, it becomes an electromagnet. The electromagnetic coil attracts a steel plate, which is
attached to a switch. So the switch's motion (ON and OFF) is controlled by the current flowing to
the coil, or not, respectively. A very useful feature of a relay is that it can be used to electrically
isolate different parts of a circuit. It will allow a low voltage circuit (e.g. 5VDC) to switch the
power in a high voltage circuit (e.g. 230 VAC or more). The relay operates mechanically, so it
cannot operate at high speed.
PART (COMPONENTS) LIST

ATmega8 Microcontroller
16 x 2 LCD
4 Chh Relay Board
3 x 4 Keypad
12V DC Power Supply
Crystal Oscillator