The proposed project aims to develop an automatic electrical product life cycle testing system using a PIC microcontroller. In industries, electrical products such as lights, bulbs, motors and other electrical appliances must undergo life cycle testing to determine their durability and reliability. This testing is generally performed by repeatedly switching the products ON and OFF for a specified number of cycles. The proposed system uses a PIC microcontroller to control the ON/OFF operation of the electrical load through a relay module. A keypad is interfaced with the microcontroller to allow the user to enter the required number of switching cycles. Based on the entered value, the system automatically switches the load ON and OFF while a down counter continuously decreases the remaining cycle count. The testing status and remaining count are displayed on an LCD. The system also incorporates GSM technology to send an SMS notification to the user after the completion of the testing cycles. An ESP8266 Wi-Fi module is used to monitor the testing progress and cycle count through a mobile application. When the down counter reaches zero, the switching operation automatically stops. In the future, the system can be enhanced by incorporating a load monitoring circuit to detect load failure during testing. This feature will help identify the exact number of successful ON/OFF cycles completed before the product fails, thereby providing a more accurate estimation of its switching life and reliability.            

The main features of the project are:

• Keypad based running time entering system.
• Relay based switching mechanism.
• Visible alerts using LCD display.
• GSM based alert SMS.
• Continuous monitoring of life cycle using IOT technology.
• Using PIC Microcontroller to achieve this task.

           

The major building blocks of the project are:  

• Regulated power supply.
• PIC Microcontroller.
• Keypad.
• Relay
• LCD display.
• GSM.
• Esp8266 wi-fi Module.
• AC and DC loads.
• Crystal oscillator.
• Reset button.
• LED indicator.

     

Software’s used:

• PIC-C compiler for Embedded C programming.
• PIC kit 2 programmer for dumping code into Micro controller.
• Express SCH for Circuit design.

         

Regulated Power Supply:    

             

Block diagram:              

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