PROJECT TITLE

AN INDUSTRY DEFINED PROBLEM REPORT (IDP PART-1) SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF

DIPLOMA ENGINEERING IN ELECTRONICS & COMMUNICATION

SUBMITTED BY NAME
XXX XXX XXX

ENROLLMENT NO
XXX XXX XXX

N.B.PATEL POLYTECHNIC COLLEGE, PILUDARA

YEAR 2011

EXTERNAL GUIDE
XXX

INTERNAL GUIDE
XXX

INDEX
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ACKNOELWDGEMENT ABSTRACT FLOW OF WORK THE SYSTEM/THE PROTOTYPE MAJOR COMPONENTS & TOOLS REFERNCES/METHODOLOGY ADOPTED APPLICATIONS, LIMITATIONS & CONCLUSION

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
We take this opportunity to humbly express our thankfulness to all those concerned with our project entitled Digital Weighing Scale (DWS). We express very sincere thanks to Mr. EXT. GUIDE for providing us an opportunity to work on such an interesting project, without whose help we could not have completed it satisfactorily. His invaluable guidance has proved to be a key tour success in overcoming challenges we faced during the course of the project work. Moreover, we express our deep sense of gratitude to Mr. INT. GUIDE, Lecturer, EC department, N B PATEL POLTTECHNIC, PILUDARA for rendering her aid also deserve our sincere thanks.

About The Company:

Introduction: HP ELECTRONICS is a registered SSI unit and specializes in Developing and Manufacturing Embedded Electronic Instruments for various industries of INDIA. The company has over 25 years of experience in producing electronics products. It is a professionally managed unit promoted by MR.HEMANG VYAS, B.Sc. and AMIEE (LONDON).He is the founder of the company and also heads the HP ELECTRONICS group companies.

Products & forth-coming projects: IR-sensor/detector based projectile velocity computer-Ballistic applications Microcontroller based time/count input sequence controllers-industrial applications Design development & technology transfer of commercial products Electronic milk Weighing Machine Intelligent data converter RS232/RS485/RS422 CNC machine tools-modules/PCBs Electronic Voting Machine LPG Gas Automation

ABSTRACT
The aim of this project titled Digital Weighing Scale (DWS) is to make a portable, low cost, low power, compact device that can measure the weight of the object placed on the sensible area of the system & to display the calibrated value on the LCD. The weighing scale is a measuring instrument that determines the weight and mass of the object. Using Digital weighing scales involves electronic equipments like Microcontroller based design and user friendly digital display like seven segment or LCD or OLED etc. In such sophisticated digital weighing scales one can provide different units of the weights like gm, Kg, Pound etc with proper calibration required by the sensor used. The use of a Digital Weighing-Scale (DWS) using the reference design discussed offers a solution to ready-to-use and easily scalable to measure low to high-capacity loads. A high-resolution Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC) external or internal to the microcontroller can be used to accurately measure the load cell output. Here as the primary purpose is low cost & small size system design; so we will use the microcontroller which provides ADC, crystal & many features inbuilt & simultaneously the open source tool chain. By using sensors like strain gauges or load cells or any compact precision sensor DWS can be used as a postal scale, glossary scale, body weight scale, luggage weight measurement, calibrated scale and jewelry scale and so on.

FLOW OF WORK

To understand the Industry Defined Problem report (IDP part-1) mentioned by GTU To make groups of students in the class for the project To make a list of the electronics companies and their contact details available in Gujarat To divide the selected companies among the students of the group To make telephonic/e-mail contact with companies and ask for the training Deciding the company and getting NOC from the college for training purpose Getting the problem definition and title from internal or internal project guide or from surveying Completing the formalities disclosing IDP part-1 details Gathering information about the project from internet, magazine, books etc Deciding the features for the prototype To prepare report for IDP part-1 as per scheme Showing the same to internal and external guides To Make suggested corrections and submit the soft copy and the hard copy of the document to the internal guide Finding the required and the best available hardware and software tools To learn to use the tools Practicing the programming and circuit simulation Designing the circuit and the PCB if feeling tough to build the same on GPB Making the code and the software setup Finding the bugs on simulator and solving if found Making Power Point Presentation and the detailed report of the project Giving presentations in the college Combining all the hardware and software modules on one simulator for the prototype if possible Calculating the cost of the prototype To buy the components Finding the alternate of the component if the one is not easily available To start building hardware or ordering PCB if prepared Finding the bugs on actual setup and solving the same if found To present whole prototype in front of internal and external guide

THE PROTOTYPE
Features:

12 V, 10 W DC supply Measures 10 g to 40 kg (with 10 g resolution) 8-bit RISC, CMOS MCU Open source software tool chain 22-Bit Delta-Sigma ADC with high noise immunity Load cell or strain Gauge sensor interfacing Medium accuracy Calibrated in different units like gm, Kg etc In System Programmable Prototype User friendly Output on 16*2 LCD Portable and low weight Low cost and Low Power Max 150 % safe overload

General Block diagram:

Strain gauge is a passive transducer and is configured in whinstone bridge form. Initially ratio of the resistances of opposite arms of the bridge is equal and the difference output due to difference in this ratio is zero because bridge is in balanced condition. But when load is placed on any of the arm; resistance of that arm varies and the bridge becomes unbalanced. So the bridge circuit gives output voltage proportional to change of the resistance of that particular arm and which is proportional to the weight placed on strain gauge. All real world signals are analog in nature and so the electrical outputs from sensors are also analog in nature. But such analog signal cannot be given to microcontroller directly because MCU can understand only digital representation. So Analog to Digital Converter (ADC) is used to feed the digital equivalent to MCU. Advanced microcontroller may have inbuilt crystal and ADC also; but for obtaining better accuracy we need ADC with better resolution. So here external ADC with 12-bit to 24-bit is to be used. MCU is programmed to calibrate ADC voltage into different output units of weight like gm, Kg etc. Required output unit can be selected using control switches. The prototype displays the weight if the object on 16*2 LCD display which is quite user friendly.

MAJOR COMPONENTS & TOOLS

Power supply unit:
In the prototype; 230V 50HZ AC supply is rectified and is converted into 9V DC using combination of transformer and bridge circuit followed by filter. This 9V DC is converted into 5V DC regulated output using LM7805 IC.

Microcontroller:

AVR key benefits:

High CPU performance (1 MIPS throughput per MHz) Pico-power technology (ideal mode & power down modes) Code efficient architecture both for C/C++ & assembly language with high code density Open source tool chain (e.g.; win AVR, AVR studio, Code vision etc) & easy to use Low power consumption using power saving modes (VCC: 1.8 to 9V, 100nA to 500nA current consumption) Low system cost & high reliability Eco-friendly packages (lead free & halide free)

Sensor:
A device by which any natural, physical quantity is directly transformed into an electrical voltage or current proportional to input is called sensor or transducer. Active sensor: They generate electrical signal directly in response to measuring quantity without requiring energy for the energy conversion. For example: Photovoltaic cell, piezoelectric sensors Passive sensor: They require energy to generate electrical signal in response to the input quantity. For examples: Strain gauges, thermistors Sensor design consideration:

Linearity Resolution Accuracy

Dynamic range/saturation point Frequency response

Signal conditioning Calibration Hysteresis

Drift Repeatability Life time

Strain gauge: When a strain gauge is subjected to a stress, its length and cross-section area decreases. Since resistance of a conductor is directly proportional to its length and inversely proportional to its area of cross-section, the resistance of gauge increases with positive strain. For strain gauge; change in differential output voltage with a rated load is 2 mV to 4 mV per volt of excitation (the excitation voltage being the difference between the +Input and the Input terminals of the load cell) as shown in figure.

Load cell characteristic:

Analog to digital conversion:

An analog-to-digital converter (abbreviated ADC, A/D or A to D) is a device that converts a continuous quantity to a discrete time digital representation. An ADC may also provide an isolated measurement. The reverse operation is performed by a digital-to-analog converter (DAC). Typically, an ADC is an electronic device that converts an input analog or to a digital number proportional to the magnitude of the voltage or current. However, some non-electronic or only partially electronic devices, such as rotary encoders, can also be considered ADCs.

The digital output may use different coding schemes. Typically the digital output will be a two's complement binary number that is proportional to the input, but there are other possibilities. An encoder, for example, might output a Gray code. The resolution of the converter indicates the number of discrete values it can produce over the range of analog values. The values are usually stored electronically in binary form, so the resolution is usually expressed in bits. In consequence, the number of discrete values available, or "levels", is a power of two. For example, an ADC with a resolution of 8 bits can encode an analog input to one in 256 different levels, since 28 = 256. The values can represent the ranges from 0 to 255 (i.e. unsigned integer) or from 128 to 127 (i.e. signed integer), depending on the application. Resolution can also be defined electrically, and expressed in volts. The minimum change in voltage required to guarantee a change in the output code level is called the least significant bit (LSB) voltage. The resolution Q of the ADC is equal to the LSB voltage. The voltage resolution of an ADC is equal to its overall voltage measurement range divided by the number of discrete voltage intervals:

Where N is the number of voltage intervals and EFSR is the full scale voltage range. EFSR is given by

Where VRefHi and VRefLow are the upper and lower extremes, respectively, of the voltages that can be coded. Normally, the number of voltage intervals is given by

Where M is the ADC's resolution in bits

MCP3351 (ADC) features:

System development tools:

AVR studio 4.15.623:

The integrated development environment (IDE) contains complete open source tool chain An editor An assembler A debugger A front end for all AVR emulators STK-500 kit & for C/C++ programming Supports Windows 9x/ME/NT/2000/XP/VISTA environment Supports the complete range of ATMEL AVR tools and each release will always contain the latest updates WinAVR is the cross compiler for C programming

Proteus:
The Proteus Design Suite is offering the ability to co-simulate both high and low-level micro-controller code in the context of a mixed-mode SPICE circuit simulation. The Proteus Design Suite comprises a fully integrated EDA package with modules for schematic capture (ISIS), circuit simulation (PROSPICE),PCB layout (ARES) and embedded co-simulation (VSM). The simulation functions take place entirely within the schematic editor whilst ISIS and ARES share a common, easy to use, Windows user interface. All of which reduces the time. ISIS and ARES are themselves tightly integrated, offering both forward and backward annotation and a unique Design Explorer which allows us to navigate and cross probe between the schematic, net list and PCB databases.

REFERNCES/METHODOLOGY ADOPTED
Web resources:

www.google.com www.wikipedia.com www.atmel.com www.microchip.com www.howstuffworks.com www.efymag.com www.scribd.com www.extremeelectronics.com www.rhydolabz.com www.electronics-lab.com www.e-yantra.org

Books:

8051 microcontroller & embedded systems by MAZIDI 8051 microcontroller Architecture, programming & applications by AYALA Customizing AVR microcontroller by GADRE Op-amps & linear IC by GAYKWAD Electronic instrumentation by KALSI AVR studio4 user manual EFY magazine ELEKTOR magazine

APPLICATIONS, LIMITATIONS & CONCLUSION

Applications:

In Postal scales In Glossary scales In Body weight scales In Luggage weight measurements In Calibrated scales In Jewelry scales etc

Limitations:

As the prototype doesnt provide any standards regarding the system; so it should be used for formal use only & should not be used for researches or for cross checking purposes for inventions.

Suitable for lower resolution range (3000 e). Higher resolutions lead to more complicated production (more extensive adjustment work, selection procedure with lower yield) and hence to appreciably higher costs.

Calibration is must before each measurement.

Future Up gradation:

The system provides performance ranging from 10-bits of noise-free resolution up to 16-bits. This resolution is available for a sensor whose differential output voltage ranges from0V to 10 mV. For a sensor with a larger output voltage range, even higher resolution can be achieved.

Accuracy and Resolution may be increased by using appropriate sensor with optimized design.

Computer interface and wireless protocols may be used for better data acquisition and storage from a remote place.