ARDUINO BASED

UNDERGROUND CABLE
FAULT DETECTION
Submitted by: AJIT .P. SINGH
FARAN ANSARI

Contents

Project overview
Block diagram
Power supply
Arduino Duemalinove.
Relay
Relay driver
LCD
Software requirements
Schematic & Working of the project
Advantages
Applications
Future scope
Conclusion

Project overview

The project uses the simple concept of OHMs law

where a low DC voltage is applied at the feeder
end through a series resistor.
The current would vary depending upon the length
of fault of the cable in case there is a short circuit
of LL or 3L or LG etc.
The series resistor voltage drop changes
accordingly which is then fed to analog input of
programmed microcontroller would display the
same in Kilo meters.
The project is assembled with a set of resistors
representing cable length in KMs and fault creation
is made by a set of switches at every known KM to
cross check the accuracy of the same.

Block diagram

Power supply

Contd..

The 230V AC supply is first stepped down

to 12V AC using a step down transformer.
This is then converted to DC using bridge
rectifier.
The AC ripples is filtered out by using a
capacitor and given to the input pin of
voltage regulator 7805.
At output pin of this regulator we get a
constant 5V DC which is used for MC and
other ICs in this project.

ARDUINO

The Arduino microcontroller is an easy to

use yet powerful single board computer
that has gained considerable traction in
the hobby and professional market.
The Arduino is open-source, which
means hardware is reasonably priced and
development software is free.

Image of development
board

Features of Duemalinove

The Duemalinove board features an

Atmel ATmega328 microcontroller
operating at 5 V with 2 Kb of RAM, 32 Kb
of flash memory for storing programs and
1 Kb of EEPROM for storing parameters.
The clock speed is 16 MHz, which
translates to about executing about
300,000 lines of C source code per
second

..contd

The Arduino programming language is a

simplified version of C/C++. If you know
C, programming the Arduino will be
familiar.
If you do not know C, no need to worry as
only a few commands are needed to
perform useful functions.

Relay

A relay is an electrically operated

switch.
Current flowing through the coil of the
relay creates a magnetic field which
attracts a lever and changes the switch
contacts.
The coil current can be on or off so relays
have two switch positions and have
double throw (changeover) switch
contacts as shown in the diagram.

Contd..

Relays allow one circuit to switch a

second circuit which can be completely
separate from the first.
For example a low voltage battery circuit
can use a relay to switch a 230V AC
mains circuit.
There is no electrical connection inside
the relay between the two circuits, the
link is magnetic and mechanical.
To drive relay through MC ULN2003 relay
driver IC is used

Relay driver ULN2003

ULN is Relay driver application

The ULN2003 is a monolithic high voltage
and high current Darlington transistor arrays.
It consists of seven NPN Darlington pairs that
features high-voltage outputs with commoncathode clamp diode for switching inductive
loads.
The collector-current rating of a single
Darlington pair is 500mA.
The Darlington pairs may be paralleled for
higher current capability.

Contd..

The ULN functions

as an inverter.
If the logic at input
1B is high then the
output at its
corresponding pin
1C will be low.

Liquid crystal display (lcd)

Most common LCDs connected to the microcontrollers are

16x2 and 20x2 displays.

This means 16 characters per line by 2 lines and 20

characters per line by 2 lines, respectively.

The standard is referred to as HD44780U, which refers to

the controller chip which receives data from an external
source (and communicates directly with the LCD.

Contd..

If an 8-bit data bus is used the LCD will

require 11 data lines(3 control lines plus
the 8 lines for the data bus)
The three control lines are referred to as
EN, RS, and RW
EN=Enable (used to tell the LCD that you
are sending it data)
RS=Register Select. When RS=0; data is
treated as a command & When RS=1;
data being sent is text data.
R/W=Read/Write . When RW=0; the data
written to the LCD & When RW=0; the
data reading to the LCD.

Software requirements

Arduino software which can be freely

available on Arduino Forum

http://arduino.cc/en/Guide/HomePage.

Working of project

The project uses a set of resistances in series i.e.

R10,R11,R12,R13 and R17,R16,R14,R21,
R20,R19,R18,R25,R22 as shown in the circuit
diagram, one set for each phase.
Each series resistors represents the resistance of
the underground cable for a specific distance thus
4 such resistances in series represent 1-4kms.
3 relays are used to common point of their
contacts are grounded while the NO points are
connected to the input of the R17, R21 & R25
being the 3 phase cable input.
R10 is fed with a series resistor R1 to 5v supply.
The common point of R10 & R1 is given to input
pin 0 of arduino duely wired as explained above.

THANK YOU