A retrofit for controlling the brightness of an automotive headlight to reduce glare by using embedded C program on a PIC microcontroller

Abstract

In an automotive, the headlights are the most needed equipment to help the drivers to get a proper viewing at night. Major difficulties of visibility while driving at night will be either due to bad weather conditions or due to approaching vehicles high beam striking on the driver. High beams create a problem called glare which makes the driver have partial blindness for a small-time period. The solution for this glaring effect is to either deviate the incident high beam light of the vehicles or to reduce the brightness of the light so that the glare caused can be reduced. This work is an experiment to show how the glare can be reduced by reducing the brightness of the high beam light, by taking inputs of the vehicle speed and proportionally altering the voltage supplied to the head-lamps. With embedded C program language, an experimental setup was made where the voltage supply to the bulb is controlled according to the program. This results in reducing the luminous of the light source. This methodology can be adapted to the existing vehicles.