Electronic Design for the Time Measurement of a Tv Channel

ELECTRONIC DESIGN FOR THE TIME MEASUREMENT OF

A TV CHANNEL

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a designing an electronic circuit to measure the total time period of a particular TV channel usage. Thus, this circuit will determine usage time of all the available channels. This is going to be very much important to the TV broadcasters, since they concern about number of customers and maximum usage of their TV programs in every day.

All these choices influence whether enough people can be attracted to justify a particular channel. To do an effective job of attracting and keeping listeners or viewers so that they can be delivered to advertisers, broadcasters must know the potential audience. So that each video broadcasters they want to mark their potential service to the customers. Therefore usage time of their channel by customers is unavoidable requirement. Thus this paper presents a research, which is progressed by us to give the systematic solution to the relevant users.

The project is based on a design of microprocessor based electronic circuit, which consists of micro controller, input and output peripherals. Input via IR sensors and Output is display unit. Once the remote controller is selected to a particular channel, then it emits the IR signal. Thus the sensor of the circuit can detect the IR signal and the rest of the circuit will perform the manipulations to get the time duration of the corresponding channel.

1.0 INTRODUCTION

Need of an equipment for measuring the total time period of usage of TV channels is a vital requirement to the broadcasters in order to enhance the program performance of their channel. The goal of this project is to design a microprocessor based circuit gadget to calculate the total time period of a particular TV channel in a real time usage.

In this design, whole project is considered as mainly in three sections. First part is to design an input peripheral, which is a circuit, used to receive a signal, related to each channel and to convert it to a digital form in order to couple with the microcontroller.

Second section is to design a controller circuit, which is used to manipulate all the input data with an existing data of memory. Suitable micro controller is selected according to the project requirements. And then it is programmed using low-level language. This part plays a major role in this project, such as identification of the signal corresponding to the selected channel and calculations of the total time period of each channel.

Third section is to design an output peripheral with a display unit. Display unit give the results in a user-friendly manner such that the users can easily gather the necessary information that supports to the TV broadcasters.

2.0 METHOD TO ACHIVE THE GOAL

Infra Red (IR) signal is used as an input signal to vary the TV channel according to the changes in the remote controller. For the operation of complete design, it is necessary to take an input signal from the remote controller. That is the channel detection signal is fed to the circuit through a receiving circuit unit.

Also the channel detection signal can be taken from the Remote receiving unit of the TV. Because of practical difficulties of taking the signal from the TV unit, IR signal is taken from remote controller.

Remote controller of TV used to communicate using light waves of the IR spectrum. An emitter (a photo diode) of remote controller emits the signal and a receiver (another photo diode) of remote receiving unit of TV receives the various type of signal with respect to the channel selection

In the input peripheral of the complete circuit, receiving circuit consists of an IR sensor. A "photo diode" is to be used as an IR signal sensor to identify the relative intensities of different IR light signals with respect to the channel selection of the remote controller.

Since the signal strength of the IR signal is not enough, after acquiring the input signal, amplifier is used to magnify the signal in receiving circuit unit. In addition to that, an A/D (Analog to Digital) converter has to be used to convert the analog signal into digital form to be handled by the microcontroller.

Microcontroller detects the digital signal from the receiving circuit unit and compare with the existing data in the memory and then determine the channel corresponding to that signal. And then "Timer" will be started to run. Clock signal synchronize all the elements of IC. Timer gives the total usage time and it will be displayed in the display unit.

2.1 Receiving Circuit Unit

Figure 2.1: Diagram of the Receiving Circuit

In this circuit a photodiode is used as an IR sensor. The electric signal coming from the photodiode is lesser strength. Therefore, to amplify that signal, an Operational Amplifier is used. LED, which is used here is an ordinary coloured one which will be lit, when IR radiation is been received. The output of the OpAmp (pin6) will be used to get the respective voltage for each channel. This will be then coupled with A/D converter. And binary output differentiates the channel.

2.2 Microcontroller Circuit

The next important aspect of the project is to design a control circuit. Where the selecting a suitable microcontroller is totally depend on the functions and the requirements of the project, because our aim is to manipulate the input data and save it in a memory for the later retrieval. Therefore an appropriate microcontroller has to be chosen in order to fulfil these requirements. We have chosen the PIC16F84 (18-pin Enhanced FLASH/ EEPROM) 8-bit Micro controller.

Figure 2.2 - Pin Diagram of PIC16F84

Features:

 Only 35 single word instructions.

 Operating