GSM Controlled Level Crossing

Published on 20 May 2022. Written by Tej Kumar

In India, Railways is one of the biggest networks which is making traveling a lot easier. Generally, we have Level Crossings where roads meet railway tracks. Usually, we have one authorized person who is operating the level crossing manually whenever a train is crossing. But, Across India, there are many Railway crossing without proper level crossings. Through this project, you are going to build a unique system where you can open or close the Level Crossing just with an SMS. If we are talking about wireless communication, First things come into the picture are Bluetooth, Wi-Fi technology, GSM technology. Among these things, most effective communication is GSM, because it can be operated from a very long distance and Output will be very accurate because we are going to control the level crossing gates by an SMS using GSM modem. This modem uses a SIM card and operates through a subscription with the mobile operator.

GSM is generally called as Modem (Global System for Mobile Communications). It is a wireless communication module, which will be used to communicate with a computer or processor over the network. The GSM modem uses a variation of TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access) which is most commonly used of the digital wireless telephony technologies like TDMA, GSM, and CDMA.

This GSM modem needs a SIM card to operate through a network range subscribed by the network operator. This modem can be connected to a computer via a serial, Bluetooth or USB connection. This modem is also a standard GSM mobile phone with a suitable cable and software driver to connect to a USB port on your PC. Generally, this modem is preferred instead of a GSM mobile phone. In addition to this, we can add Wi-Fi module, to upload the data to the remote cloud, to access it from anywhere in the world.

You will program the microcontroller in such a way that, say whenever you send SMS to the SIM inside the GSM module, from your operational mobile to on the Level Crossing, it will close/open the gate based on the SMS you had sent. You can also innovate the system further to store the present status of the Level Crossing ( whether gates are opened or closed ) in a remote server which can be accessible from anywhere.

Project Description:

Arduino/Genuino Uno: The digital and analog input/output pins equipped in this board can be interfaced to various expansion boards and other circuits. Serial communication interface is a feature in this board, including USB which will be used to load the programs from computer.
GSM module: The GSM module we use is SIM 800/900 MODULE. In this modem, Bluetooth is interfaced by default. Basically, there are three types of GSM module are there. They are Data Loggers Data Pushers Data Pullers
Servo Motors: A servomotor is a closed-loop servomechanism that uses position feedback to control its motion and final position. The input to its control is a signal (either analog or digital) representing the position
Wi-Fi Module : ESP8266 Wi-Fi module is generally used to establish the wireless communication between the devices. But this module is not capable of 5-3V logic shifting and will require an external logic level converter.

Operation involved in the project:

Project Implementation:

Firstly you will interface the GSM module and servo motors with Arduino Board
Insert an operational SIM card into the GSM module
Upload the code into the Arduino board
Once all the components are online, send the Particular SMS to control the gates of level Crossing (here we use servo to open or close the gate)
The present status of the level crossing can be updated in remote server and can be retrieved whenever we want

Software requirements:

Arduino IDE : You will be needing Arduino IDE software to write and upload the programming logic onto the Arduino Uno board
Thingspeak : Also, you need to create an account in the ThinkSpeak IoT platform to integrate the system onto the cloud and store the data online

Programming language: Arduino Programming (C++)

Kit required to develop GSM Controlled Level Crossing:

Technologies you will learn by working on GSM Controlled Level Crossing:

GSM Controlled Level Crossing

Project Description:

Operation involved in the project:

Project Implementation:

Software requirements:

Any Questions?

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