Laboratory experience in solving real-life engineering problems - Design and implementation of GPS/GPRS System for District Heating System Parameters Monitoring

Abstract

Operating of modern industrial and communal systems demands centralized remote supervising, centralized data acquisition and remote control for the purpose of reducing number of human mistakes, time between failure and number of men labor. For this reason there is a labor market growing demand for engineers with knowledge and skills in remote monitoring and control. Engineering students have to learn more about the integration of different technologies like Remote control sensing, Instrumentation, Remote control, Communication systems, Human computer interaction, etc, for solving complex real-world engineering problems. Laboratory work is recognized as an efficient method for engineering students to assimilate knowledge and to develop skills for solving real world problems. The goal of this paper is introduce laboratory project for design, implementation and verification in laboratory condition, by employing Global Positioning System receivers, measurement techniques that are suited to the continuous monitoring and data acquisition. Laboratory project includes the design and the implementation of GPS/GPRS (Global Positioning System/General Packet Radio Service) system for low power data acquisition using MSP430 Texas Instruments microcontroller for monitoring and data acquisition of the heating substation parameters. The system is designed for a temperature and pressure monitoring in heating stations. It contains GPS/GPRS gateway and 8 analog sensor inputs. Proposed acquisition module and the server base station are also suitable for industrial applications, home applications and for other appliances. The proposed measurement procedures, which are different from commercially available measurement units, are based on general-purpose acquisition hardware and processing software, thus guaranteeing the possibility of being easily reconfigured and reprogrammed according to the specific requirements of different possible fields of application and to their future developments. From these reasons described laboratory project is excellent didactic experiment for engineering students to have hands-on experience for the complex real-life engineering problems.