This project of mine is to successfully reduce the power

consumption in our home and thus save energy and reduce electricity bills. I was inspired to think of this project due to the rising electricity rates. I had always wondered why the electricity bills at our home used to be very less when compared to our neighbours and to my surprise I found the solution in the fact that it was due to the energy saving practice followed at my home.

The concept is very simple. We reduce the number of home appliances running at a time and thus reduce the load and hence reduce the current consumption. For example we wouldn’t have any other home appliance running while the water pump was on, and in the rest of the cases we would only have only two gadgets running at a time, like only the TV and refrigerator, PC and refrigerator, microwave and so on.

My aim by this project was to automatically control the devices by creating a network of appliances and controlling them with an embedded system.

Step 1: REQUIREMENTS:

1) Arduino Leonardo

2) IR remote

3) LCD panel

4) LED’s (as i'm connecting LED's to represent the devices here)

5) Buzzer

6) TSOP

Step 2: Construction

The devices are connected to 6 digital pins to their relay controls.

A maximum of 6 devices can be connected on to the arduino board. The buzzer is connected to pin 9 of arduino and TSOP to the A1 pin.

Step 3: Components:1) ARDUINO

For all those who

don’t know what an arduino board is, it’s an open source development platform that is used by professionals, hobbyists, and artists alike to develop products and art. The main advantage with arduino’s are that they are really easy to program and to use (even school children with basic programming knowledge can do it). In short it is “simple and powerful” but not much “robust”, I’d say.

Step 4: TSOP and SIRC

Coming over to the working of the remote, it communicates by sending IR pulses to the TSOP. If you look at the image, you can see the the 1.2ms high of the Logical '1' has further black lines with spaces in between. These correspond to the ON/OFF cycles. The space between these is what is called the frequency. The frequency of occurrence of a ON/OFF cycle is what it means.

The black bars in the below image correspond to high signals (called marks) and the white spaces in between correspond to low signals (called spaces). The duration of the 'marks' varies according to the bit being transmitted. It is 2.4ms for the start bit, 1.2ms for HIGH bit and 0.6ms for LOW bit. The duration of the 'spaces' is a constant 0.6ms. Every mark is followed by a space. Any data can be converted to binary format and transmitted in this manner. In fact this is the basic form of all types of serial communication.

LSB=least
significant bit

MSB= Most significant bit

The picture above shows a typical pulse train of the SIRC protocol. With this protocol the LSB is transmitted first. The start burst is always 2.4ms wide, followed by a standard space of 0.6ms. Apart from signalling the start of a SIRC message this start burst is also used to adjust the gain of the IR receiver. Then the 7-bit Command is transmitted, followed by the 5-bit Device address. In this case Address 1 and Command 19 is transmitted. Commands are repeated every 45ms (measured from start to start) for as long as the key on the remote control is held down.

Step 5: WORKING

Each appliance has a relay on its power line which is controlled by a signal from an arduino board. .The appliances’ on the same room are connected to the same arduino board, like the mixer, microwave, Induction stove are connected to the same board. When more than a number, say 3 gadgets are switched ON , the device with the lowest priority gets switched off. The priority of the devise can be pre-set during the programming of the arduino.

The device comes with the following features:

1) The number of threshold devices-‘n’ can be set.

2) Night mode: Where light plus n-1 devices can be switched on

3) Day mode: Where light cannot be switched on

4) A continuous interactive display, and alert system using the buzzer.

Step 6: User Manual:

On connecting the arduino, a pop up “Welcome to power saver”

comes up on the LCD.

Once it rolls out, you can press numbers one to 6 to configure which device you want to switch ON or OFF. Pressing once switches it ON and pressing twice switches it OFF.

To change the mode, activate the mode change button and press the desired mode button.

To Shut everthing down, use the master power button.

Step 7: Making of the Device

Connect the devices to the relays and then connect each corresponding control wire of the relay to the digital pin of arduino as per required. Also connect the LCD panel.

Open your arduino IDE and open the program1. Select the port in which you have connected your board and upload your program into the board.

Now open the serial monitor in the IDE and press each key of your remote and note down the decoded details that appears on the serial monitor. Note down each of these on a book.

Open the sketch provided, open it and make necessary pin & code changes .(These changes may differ according to comfort of the programmer).

Upload the program and watch the power saver work.