Coin-Based Mobile Charger using Solar Tracker

Abstract

Background/Purpose: Mobile phone industry is a booming industry in the market in the present times. This industry is growing tremendously not only in urban areas but also in villages. For communication and other various purposes people use Mobile phones. Hence the usage of mobile is much more that before ten years. In urban areas there are many resources available for charging but in rural areas most of the time charging facilities are unavailable and load shedding causes a lot of problems. Sometimes the battery becomes low during conversations or even an important transaction, and an urgent charging becomes necessary.

Objective: The major objective of this work is by inserting a coin in public places, one can charge the mobile phone.  It will be helpful for the people who are suing mobile phones outside their homes/offices, need to use the coin based mobile phone charger to charge the mobile.  To transmit and receive the IR (Infrared) signal, an IR transmitter and IR receiver will be used at the receiving end.  A coin needs to be inserted between IR transmitter and receiver, which will change the polarity of the pulses in Signal Conditioning Unit (SCU) input.    To activate the 230V charger, the relay will be ON and then the charger is used to charge the mobile phone.

Design/Methodology/Approach: Coin-based Mobile charger using solar tracker designed to provide a completely different service to people staying in rural areas.   For controlling applications, 8051 microcontroller-based circuits used for programming. Power grid is the used for charging and the energy obtained from the sun is used when grid power is not available.  MATLAB is utilized for coding to find the edge of the coin comparing it to the image clicked by the camera and to avoid coin duplication

Findings/Results: A simple and effective mobile charger has been implemented, which allow users to charge their phones in an emergency in public areas. This device uses very few components with a microcontroller 8051-based circuit.  Usage of stepper motors allows accurate sun tracking. After reviewing the data, it was discovered that it is possible to capture good volume of sun energy when compared with fixed panel system.  This method is more efficient, less costly and easier to use.

Conclusion: This work uses solar power as solar energy and generates more energy for free of cost. This system also uses external grid power in the absence of solar energy which will be helpful in the rural areas since villages face load shedding most of the time.

Paper Type: Research paper on the success story and contributing factors of coin based mobile charger using solar system.