Railway Level-Crossing Gate Operation
Automatic railway gate control system is implemented to prevent accidents of the traction system at the railway crossing levels. Nowadays many accidents take place at the railway gate crossing due to uneven crossings, even when the gate is about to close. In general, a railway gate is normally operated by a gate keeper as he receives the information about the arrival of the train.
Railway safety is the most crucial aspect of railways all over the world. This is the cheapest mode of transportation all over the world, and therefore, accidents are bound to happen due to carelessness manual operations. Therefore, an automatic railway-crossing-gate controller is used to prevent accidents at unmanned level crossings to provide much needed safety. Such efficient controllers are mostly used in remote areas that often lack the services of a station master or line man at the crossing levels.
This project is designed to control railway level-crossing gate through an Android application by the station master. This system uses Android application device for opening and closing the level-crossing gate, remotely.
Remote operation can also be achieved by any smart phone or tablet with an Android-OS with a Graphical User Interface, based on Touch Screen Operation. This system uses a microcontroller as the heart of the project, and is programmed in such a way that any control signal from the Android phone controls the motor for operating the gate.
A Bluetooth device is interfaced with this system to achieve remote operation. Station master or driver of a train can send a command from the Android application, and therefore, the Bluetooth on the mobile phone sends the signals to the Bluetooth device attached to a control circuit. At the receiver side, this Bluetooth device receives these signals and sends them to the microcontroller.
Therefore, based on the microcontroller’s program, it sends the signals to the motor driver to operate the motor. For the operation of the motor in both the clockwise and anti-clockwise directions, a motor driver is used. This system displays the message in response to the commands given by the Android applications, such as opening and closing of the gate, in the LCD.
Here, this microcontroller based project is developed by using an Android application, and it can be further improved with a provision of sending an acknowledgment about the status of the gate to the sender and including a buzzer for alerting the persons at the gate. In this way, either the driver of the train or the station master is able to send the open or close commands to the gate remotely, through an Android portable phone.