Published on Nov 30, 2023
Imagine the convenience, if we could control different devices at home/industry by using a single PC. Our project aims at the same and could be used to control the printer power, loads & other household electrical appliances. The circuit comprises decoder, inverter, latch & relay driver sections. To control these equipments we are using PC's Parallel port. The program of controlling is written in VB language.
The PC parallel port is an expensive yet a powerful platform for implementing projects dealing with the control of real-world peripherals. This port can be used to control the printer as also household and other electrical appliances.
The computer program through the interface circuit controls the relays, which, in turn, switch the appliances on or off.The parallel port has 12 outputs including 8 data lines and 4 control lines.
The circuit described here can be used to control up to 255 electrical appliances using only eight data lines from the parallel port. Besides, the software program allows the users to know the current status of the loads.
PC with Min 64MB and recommended 256MB RAM
Harddisk Min. 10 GB and recommended 20 GB.
Min. Processor 1GHz and recommended 3GHz.
Operating System: Window xp/window vista
Developing Platform: VB 6.0
PC parallel port can be damaged quite easily if you make mistakes in the circuits you connect to it. If the parallel port is integrated to the motherboard (like in many new computers) repairing damaged parallel port may be expensive (in many cases it it is cheaper to replace the whole motherborard than repair that port).
Safest bet is to buy an inexpensive I/O card which has an extra parallel port and use it for your experiment. If you manage to damage the parallel port on that card, replacing it is easy and inexpensive.
Imagine the convenience, if we could control different devices at home/industry by using a single PC. Our project aims at the same and could be used to control the printer power, loads & other household electrical appliances.
The circuit comprises decoder, inverter, latch & relay driver sections. To control these equipments we are using PC's Parallel port. The program of controlling is written in VB language
This project, can be effectively and conveniently utilized for the control of different appliances. As this project could be extended to control about 255 devices, this could be used for computerization of an office, home, or a firm.
Though it is quiet costlier, the circuit is simple and the working mechanism could be easily understood. An added advantage of this project is that we are able to know the status of the device to be controlled. The program to control the appliances is written in VB language which is more user friendly and easy to understandable.
