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INTRODUCTION
In modern day world, all most all the appliances run due to electricity small scale industries, education institution, business corporate sector, railways, and all domestic appliances are heavily dependent on power production. In order to manage such large distribution (both primary and secondary) network, a proper way of operation, control and maintenance is required. This has laid to introduction of several microcontroller based device, which will help in knowing the power status of a distance place wirelessly. Such devices have become essential requirement in industrial automation, intensive farming, data logging, process control industries, in distributed control system and on line monitoring of data in remote location. The key requirement for such devices are a encoder and decoder for coding of data from analog to digital and vice versa, a RF(radio frequency) transmitter and receiver for transmission of data(signal) wirelessly & finally microcontrollers. Circumstances that we find ourselves in today in the field of microcontrollers had their beginnings in the development of technology of integrated circuits. This development has made it possible to store hundreds of thousands of transistors into one chip. That was a prerequisite for production of microprocessors, and the first computers were made by adding external peripherals such as memory, input-output lines, timers and other. Further increasing of the volume of the package resulted in creation of integrated circuits. These integrated circuits contained both processor and peripherals. That is how the first chip containing a microcomputer, or what would later be known as a microcontroller came about. Many electrical and computer engineering projects involve some kind of embedded system in which a microcontroller sits at the center as the primary source of control. It includes an inexpensive hardware development board hosting an eight-bit processor and a Java-based software-development environment. These features allow an embedded systems beginner how to write embedded software instead of wasting time overcoming the engineering CAD tools learning curve.
BLOCK DIAGRAM
Here we are using a sensor that can keep track of the power in the electrical lines. Whenever the power goes OFF the sensor passes the signal to the micro controller which in turn will send the signal to the encoder, which encodes the signal and send the encoded signal to the receiver end using the wireless technology like RF (radio frequency) techniques. The user at the other end will have an electronic device such that it will read the signals from the RF RX (radio frequency receiver) and then will decode the signal sent with the help of decoder and then with the help of the LCD display the status of the power at that moment can be known. Similarly when the Power is ON the equivalent message will be displayed on the LCD which will be with the user.
Microcontrollers vs Microprocessors
A microcontroller (sometimes abbreviated µC, µC or MCU) is a small computer on a single integrated circuit containing a processor core, memory, and programmable input/output peripherals. Neither program memory in the form of NOR flash or OTP ROM is also often included on chip, as well as a typically small amount of RAM. Microcontrollers are designed for embedded applications, in contrast to the microprocessors used in personal computers or other general purpose applications.
Microcontrollers are used in automatically controlled products and devices, such as automobile engine control systems, implantable medical devices, remote controls, office machines, appliances, power tools, and toys. By reducing the size and cost compared to a design that uses a separate microprocessor, memory, and input/output devices, microcontrollers make it economical to digitally control even more devices and processes. Mixed signal microcontrollers are common, integrating analog components needed to control non-digital electronic systems.
Some microcontrollers may use Four-bit words and operate at clock rate frequencies as low as 4 kHz, for low power consumption (mill watts or microwatts). They will generally have the ability to retain functionality while waiting for an event such as a button press or other interrupt; power consumption while sleeping (CPU clock and most peripherals off) may be just nano watts, making many of them well suited for long lasting battery applications. Other microcontrollers may serve performance-critical roles, where they may need to act more like a digital signal processor (DSP), with higher clock speeds and power consumption. Microcontroller differs from a microprocessor in many ways. First and the most important is its functionality. In order for a microprocessor to be used, other components such as memory, or components for receiving and sending data must be added to it. In short that means that microprocessor is the very heart of the computer. On the other hand, microcontroller is designed to be all of that in one. No other external components are needed for its application because all necessary peripherals are already built into it. Thus, we save the time and space needed to construct devices.
The microprocessor contains the logic of a computer central processing unit on one or a small number of integrated circuits. It is a multipurpose, programmable, clock-driven, register based electronic device that accepts binary data as input, processes it according to instructions stored in its memory, and provides results as output.
A microprocessor incorporates most or all of the functions of a computer's central processing unit (CPU) on a single integrated circuit (IC, or microchip).
In specific technical terms, it is a multipurpose, programmable, clock-driven, register based electronic device that accepts binary data as input, processes it according to instructions stored in its memory, and provides results as output.
The first microprocessors emerged in the early 1970s and were used for electronic calculators, using binary-coded decimal (BCD) arithmetic on 4-bit words. Other embedded uses of 4-bit and 8-bit microprocessors, such as terminals, printers, various kinds of automation etc., followed soon after. Affordable 8-bit microprocessors with 16-bit addressing also led to the first general-purpose microcomputers from the mid-1970s on.
During the 1960s, computer processors were often constructed out of small and medium-scale ICs containing from tens to a few hundred transistors. The integration of a whole CPU onto a single chip greatly reduced the cost of processing power. From these humble beginnings, continued increases in microprocessor capacity have rendered other forms of computers almost completely obsolete (see history of computing hardware), with one or more microprocessors used in everything from the smallest embedded systems and handheld devices to the largest mainframes and supercomputers.
Since the early 1970s, the increase in capacity of microprocessors has followed Moore's law, which suggests that the number of transistors that can be fitted onto a chip doubles every two years. Although originally calculated as a doubling every year, Moore later refined the period to two years. It is often incorrectly quoted as a doubling of transistors every 18 months.
In microcontroller, we have inbuilt memory i.e. RAM (random access memory), ROM (read only memory), serial interfaces, timers, counters which are not available in microprocessor.
Microprocessors have many OP codes (operational codes) and minimum bit handling instructions where as it is vice versa in case of microcontroller.
Microcontroller is used in lower end projects where memory is fixed while microprocessor is used in high end projects. But in case of some micro controller we can add external memory using ports provided to it.
Different types of microprocessor are 8085, 8086, 80X806 (80286, 80386, etc…), Pentium series (Pentium 1, 2, 3, 4), core series (dual core 2, core 2 duo, core i3, core i5, core i7, etc…) &re different types of microprocessor are 8051, PIC series, ATMEL series.