Embedded Dam Gate Control System using 'C' and Visual Basic

Abstract

Now-a-days water scarcity has become a serious problem in India and there are many factors responsible for this like improper supply of water from the dam, improper water saving systems, etc. but one major factor is the improper opening and closing of the dam gate according to the level of water in the dam. Also till date the control mechanism of the dam gates are done manually and using PLC. But there are lots of errors in manual method. Also the PLC based system is huge and hence suitable for major dams due to its cost. For medium and small dams like irrigation dams does not require such huge PLC systems. So to reduce these problems a mechatronic control system is proposed in this paper. This project is a AT89S51 microcontroller based dam gate control system which helps in keeping an eye on the frequent usage of water resources from dam for irrigation purposes and efficient operation of dam gate according to the level of water and also helps in indicating about flood to people living in the surrounding. This proposed mechanism of dam gate control reduces the water wastage and efficient usage of available water is ensured. Also there are heavy load shedding problems in the villages in almost all states of India. To overcome these problems the proposed dam gate control system can be combined with the operation of the geothermal and nuclear power plants for generation of electricity. Keywords water supply , dam gate , level monitoring , gate mechanism , microcontroller , DC motor, SIMO(simple input multiple output),visual basic 6.0