SHAASTRA CIRCUIT DESIGN CHALLENGE

SCDC 2010
FIRE ALARM
TEAM NAME FACEBOOK

TEAM MEMBERS:
ARINDAM MONDAL - IIT Kharagpur
Electronics and Electrical Communication Engineering
Institute Roll 08EC3024
DEBRUPA CHAKRABORTY - Netaji Subhash Engineering College
Electronics and Communication Engineering
Institute Roll - 08109003076

EMAIL AND PHONE CONTACTS OF MEMBERSArindam Mondal arindam.mondal4u@gmail.com/ +91-9836884237

Debrupa Chakraborty debrupa.chakraborty@gmail.com/ +91-9831165667

OBJECTIVE:
To design the schematics of a fire alarm effective in detecting fire without any false notification,
integrated on a PCB board.

DESCRIPTION:
Most of the fire detecting alarms utilize circuits which are triggered by some of the properties of fire like
presence of smoke, light or heat. This leads to false alarming. To overcome the same, assembling of different
modules, dedicated to detect the different properties, has been considered.

BLOCK DIAGRAM

POWER MODULE

SMOKE DETECTOR

RATE- OF -RISE HEAT

DETECTOR

SWITCHING NETWORK

DRIVER CIRCUIT MODULE

Fig. BLOCK DIAGRAM OF THE SYSTEM

FIXED TEMPERATURE
HEAT DETECTOR

MODULES:
POWER MODULE
We have decided to use a power module which uses the household electrical supply. Although this
circuit can be worked with battery.Most of our circuit components work on 5 V so we need to convert 220 V
AC to 5V DC.

The supply is step down using a step down transformer which reduces the voltage from 220 V to 12 V
AC. This is then passed to a bridge rectifier network to obtain a 12 V DC.We have used 1N4007 diodes in the
bridge rectifier.The capacitor present between the output of the bridge rectifier and the ground line produces an
almost constant 17V DC. Then we pass it through IC 7805 to obtain 5 V DC.The 17 V DC is continued in the
circuit and is used in the driver module.
We need to add a heat sink to the 7805 because this IC gets heated up easily and can get burnt.

FIXED TEMPERATURE

Contains 2 sub modules

To display the instantaneous temperature
To check whether the temperature exceeds an afore set threshold value.

To display the instantaneous temperature we have made use of the IC7107, which is a low
power,31/2 digit A/D converter. The output of LM35 is proportional to the temperature in Celsius scale. So
when we display the output voltage of the LM35 sensor we are in a way displaying the temperature. The
temperature is displayed in a Common Anode 7 segment LED display which can be directly interfaced
with the IC7107.

To check whether the temperature exceeds an afore set threshold value calculated on the basis of, in
general temperature during any fire. One of the input of LM339 comparator is the output of LM35 and the
other being the threshold value. Whenever the temperature rises above threshold, the output of this module
becomes 1.

RATE-OF-RISE HEAT DETECTOR

This module is basically used to monitor the rate of change of temperature. In order to do this, we use
the integral method to find out the average change in temperature for 20 sec and compare it with a threshold
value.

The output of the LM35 sensor is integrated with the help of an opamp. The output of the opamp is
connected to one of the ends of LM339 and to the N/C (normal connect) end of a low power, fast switching
relay. The Vcc of the LM339 is connected to the inverted output of 555 Timer IC. The Resistors R3 and R4 and
C2 are chosen such that the output of the 555 Timer IC is 5 V for 20 s and 0 for 20 ms.But we need to turn
on the LM339 every 20 s for a period of 20 ms hence we feed the output of the 555 in an inverted form to the
Vcc of the LM339.The relay is used to switch between charging of the capacitor ( integrating the voltage) and
discharging of the capacitor through the load R2. If we do not discharge the capacitor the voltage will keep on
accumulating and will hence give erroneous results. So whenever the timer becomes low that is the LM339 gets
triggered. The relay switches from N/C to N/O and hence discharging takes place. We have used 2 logic gates
OR and NAND . We find that the output of the LM339 will be 1 for only 20 ms. But that will not be enough to
trigger the buzzer alarm. So we feed the output of the LM339 to trigger itself as well as to turn off the 555
Timer IC. Let us assume that the value of LM339 is 1.Then LM339 will remain on always and the 555 Timer
IC will become off. Then there shall be no discharging of the capacitor and hence the input to the LM339 will
always be more than the threshold and we shall get a continuous high output.

SMOKE DETECTOR
To monitor the amount of smoke produced.

A simple LED/ LDR sensor circuit is used for this module. The LDR (light dependent resistor) is placed
at an perpendicular to the beam from the light source (red LED). In absence of smoke, no photons of light enter
the LDR chamber as the light passes in a straight line in front of it. When smoke enters the optical chamber
across the path of the light beam, some light is scattered by the smoke particles, directing it at the LDR sensor.

An appropriate mechanical structure becomes a necessity because if we are unable to accumulate the
smoke into the optical chamber. Unless guaranteed, the light may not get scattered and reach the LDR.

SWITCHING CIRCUIT NETWORK

This module controls the triggering of the alarm

The outputs of the various modules are in digital nature. Whenever the output of any module is 1 it
signifies that the module has indicated fire like situation. In order to prevent the
system to be over cautious, we have considered that the mild alarm will be triggered only when the output of the
smoke detector will be 1. For the triggering of the prolonged alarm, we have considered that whenever either
of the heat detector modules have given a high output and the output of the smoke detector is also high ,then the
prolonged alarm will be triggered.
This is implemented using single OR and an AND gate. We OR the outputs of the Fixed temperature
module and the rate-of-rise module and AND it with the smoke detector module.
We do not trigger the alarm when both fixed temperature and rate-of-rise module gives a high
and smoke gives a low. This can be used to differentiate between steam and smoke(fire).

DRIVER MODULE
There will also be a driver ciruit or a booster circuit. This is a necessity because all the ICs work on 5 V
and on very low current, which might not be enough to make the buzzer work.Secondly the buzzer will offer
high impedance load so when the buzzer is triggered it can alter the working of other circuit elements.So it
becomes a necessity to isolate the buzzer from the rest of the circuit.It is done by using a driver IC L293D.

This not only is the driver module but also includes the buzzer and the light display which in our case is
the LED.This is the only circuit which needs 12V or higher voltage to work.So this will be directly connected to
the power module.There shall be two alarms i) the mild one which gets triggered only when smoke detector has
given a high output. And ii) a prolonged buzzer on the event of actual fire.In order to accomplish a mild
alarm this we have used the timer IC 555 which provides the PWM to the enable pin 1. So this causes the
LED to blink and the buzzer to sound mildly.
But when the ouput from the switching network is 1 then the 555 ic becomes off. The enable is always 1 and
hence the buzzer will sound louder and the LED will always glow.This will be the prolonged buzzer on
the event of fire.

ASSUMPTIONS
1.
We use red LED for convenient scattering of the light emitted by smoke particles. According to the
water absorption graph, red light is maximum absorbed by the water molecules of the steam. This prevents from
its scattering in presence of steam but enables the smoke and dust particles to defract the light from its straight
line propagation.Another reason for using red LED is that it is readily available and is cost effective.

2. Tresholding
It is one of the most important part and is left to the user.The temperature thresholding in case of the
fixed temperature module depends on the normal climatory conditions.However we generally fix the threshold
temperature to be around 65 C that is 650 mV.
The tresholding in case of other sensors is dependent on the sensitivity of the sensors so it has to be done
in prompt and we are not able to set any arbitrary value without actual experimentation.
3. Essential features of a fire incident
We assume for any full fledged fire incident, smoke is always produced accompanied by
excessive heating. Smoke is thus kept as a must criteria.

REFERENCES
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_detector
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoke_detector
3. http://home.howstuffworks.com/home-improvement/household-safety/fire/smoke.htm
4. http://www.national.com/mpf/LM/LM35.html
5. http://farnell.com/