Quick Prototyping of Real Time Monitoring System Using Proteus Development Tool: A Case for Self Diagnostic Traffic Light System

In this paper, a self diagnostic system for maintenance of traffic light system is developed. The quality of light produced by the light emitting element of traffic light system at remote site is monitored via graphical user interface (GUI). The remote system’s status report obtained from the GUI helps the maintenance operator(s) to change or repair the traffic light head at appropriate time. The remote site consists of a prototype T-Junction traffic light, controlled by an intelligent processor (microcontroller) which also monitors and diagnoses fault(s) in the system and alerts the central server via GSM modem interfaced to it. The microcontroller emulates the attention (AT) command of the modem and uses it to send fault alert in form of short message service (SMS) to the host server. The server has GSM receiver interface to it through a smart level converter (max 232). The tools used in the development of the prototype T-junction traffic light include proteus Virtual Simulation Module Software Development Kit (VSMSDK) used to develop the GUI and the host server, macro integrated development environment(MIDE) used to edit and assembly the software program. Wellon programmer was used to transfer the assembled program to the microcontroller chip. The results showed that proteus professional, though primarily a virtual development tool can also be used for real time development of a prototype embedded system, reducing design-market time.