TEMPERATURE INDICATOR-CUM –CONTROLLER

Here is an easy-to-construct temperature indicator-cum-controller that can

be interfaced with a heaters coil to maintain the ambient room
temperature.The controller is based on ATmega 8535 microcontroller,which
makes it dynamic and faster,and uses an LCD module to display and two keys
to in increase or decrease the set values.

CIRCUIT DISCRIPTION

Fig1 showes the circuit of the temperature indicator-cum-controller. It

comprises microcontroller ATmega8535, temperature sensor LM35, regulator
7806, an LCD module and a few discrete components.

The 230V,50Hz A C mains is stepped down by transformer X1 to deliver

a secondary output of 9V, 500 ma. The transformer output is rectified by a full-
wave bridged rectifier comprising diodes D1 through D4, filtered by capacitor
C1 and regulated by IC 7806(IC1).LED1 acts as the DC power
indicator.Resister R1 acts as the current limiter.A 4.8V rechargeable battery
provides battery backup.

The ATmega 8535 is low-power CMOS 8-bit micro controller based on the
AVR enhanced RISC architecture. ATmega8535 has such features as 8KB of in-
system progarmable flash memory (i.e,read-while-write capabilities),512-byte
EEPROM, 512-byte SRAM, 32general-purpose input/output lines, 32 general-
purpose working registers,three flexible timers/counters with compare
modes,internal and external interrupts,a serially programmable USART,a byte-
oriented two-wire serial interface, an 8-channal, 10-bit analog to digital
converter with optional differential input stage with programmable gain,a
programmable watchdog timer with internal oscillator, an SPI serial port,and
six software-selectable power-saving modes.

The AVR core combines a rich instruction set with 32 general-purpose

working registers. All 32 registers are directly connected to the arithmetic logic
unit(ALU),allowing two independent registers to be accessed in one single
instruction executed in one clock cycle. The resulting architecture is more
code-efficient while achieving throughputs up to ten times faster than the
conventional complex instruction set computer (CISC) microcontroller.

Port-A pin PA0 of the microcontroller is used as ADC to interface the

temperature sensor, which converts signals into digital equivalent.Capacitor C5
protects the ADC input from voltage fluctuations and resistor R6 is used as the
current limiter.

Port D is used to interface the LCD module,which displays the set

reference temperature.Port-D pins PDO through PD2 are connected to pins 4
through 6(RS,R/W,EN),and pins PD4 through PD7 to D4 through D7 of the
LCD module,respectively.Contrast is controlled by preset VR1.Resistor R3
limits the current of backlight of the LCD.
 Port-C pins PCO and PC1 are used to interface switches S4 and S5 for
decrementing and incrementing the temperature setting as per the room
temperature. Port-B pin PBO is used to control the relay with the help of
transistor T1.

The room heater coil is connected to contacts of relay RL1.LED2 is

connected in parallel with the relay to indicate the power-‘on’status of the relay
and the heater.D6 acts as a free-wheeling diode.A 4mhz crystal,connected
between pins 12 and 13 of the microcontroller, proviods the basic clock
frequency for the microcontroller switch S3 is used for manual reset.

The temperature measured using LM#% is compared with the refrence

value.If the measured temperature is higher than the reference value by 1 C,
the heater is switched off, and if the measured temperature is lower than the
reference value by 1 C,the heater is switched on.

Whenever the temperature of the environment is lower than the reference

temperature by 1degC,pin PBO goes high.Because of this,transistor T1 goes
into saturation and the relay energises.The heater connected with AC mains by
the normally-open(N/O)contacts of the relay increases the temperature of
surroundings.Similarly,when the temperature of surroundings is higher than
the reference temperature by 1degC,pin PBO goes low,transistor T1 cuts
off,therelayde-energises and heater is disconnected from mains.This
resultsinloweringofthetemperature to reference value.The circute in this
manner works as atemperature indicator-cum-controller.

An actual-size, singal-side PCBfor the microcontroller-based temperature

indicator-cum-controller is shown in fig2 and its component layout in fig3.

SOFTWARE

The software is written in ‘C’ language and compiled using code vision AVR C
compiler.The source program is converted into hex code by compiler.Burn this
hex into ATmega8535 AVR microcontroller.The source program is well
commented and easy to understand.

First, declare that the microcontroller’s port D is used for communication

with the LCD module and then include the header files like mega8535.h,
LCD.h, delay.h and stdio.h.Thereaftr,define the justified external reference
voltage and then the subroutine for the microcontroller to read the digital
equivalent input.

The LCD_init (16) function initializes the 16-x2-line LCD.

The LCD_clear () function clears the LCD and sets the displaying
character position at row ‘O’ and colum’O’.

The LCD_gotoxy (o, o) function sets the current display position at

column’o’ and row’o’.
 The delay_ms(50) function generates a delay of 50 milliseconds.

The loop works to get temperature, convert it into Celsius, and then
display on the LCD module.