Monday, January 27, 2020

The Design of a Voltmeter-Ammeter Using PIC Microcontroller

The Design of a Voltmeter-Ammeter Using PIC Microcontroller In electrical or electronic engineering, the voltmeter and ammeter are important devices and are used to measure current and voltage. These devices are very important as they give you an understanding of what is happening in an electrical or electronic circuit. Without these devices we wouldnt be able to determine numerical values of voltage and current therefore we wouldnt have the ability to solve electrical problems. The main objective of this project is to gain experience with the design process covering all aspects of the design process. Two software packages will be used to orchestrate the design process of the circuit and complete build of the project. These packages are OrCAD PCB Editor and Auto-Cad Inventor. This will entail everything from the designing and building of the circuit, using the software package OrCAD PCB Editor the design process will begin designing the circuit by applying all the necessary components for the Volt-Ammeter. The circuit will be built using a PIC microcontroller with a built in LCD screen which will illuminate the voltage and current readings. The second stage will be using the design package AutoCAD Inventor. This is a design software that is used to design the casing of the product with all the specifications needed to give the product the compact finish needed to complete the product before presenting it to the customer. A volt-ammeter is the project designed for Napier University so the students can benefit from an easy to use product having the ability to test, measure and do calculations when measuring voltage and current. The finished product must have certain specifications which will make the device portable, easy to use and compact and also making the device durable so the students can use the device safely without encountering any problems or difficulties. The budget for the project has to be under  £40 per unit so the university can benefit from the finished designed product. 1.2.1 Functionality Electrical measurement devices are used to digitally calculate electrical quantities. Two of the more common quantities are voltage and current. A volt-ammeter is perfect as an addition to any electronic projects like battery chargers or power supplies where it is a necessity to monitor current and voltage consumption. Regarding this project, a PIC16F876A microcontroller will be used to interface the LCD screen. 1.2.2 Engineering requirements The volt-ammeter device will be designed to measure an output voltage ranging from  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   0-70v/0-500V with a resolution of 100mV which will be carrying a current between 0-10A with a resolution of 10mA. The volt-ammeter will have a step up and step down button for added calibration to make it possible to measure voltages over 70V and to measure current over 10A. A PIC 16F876A microcontroller will be used in the volt-ammeter. The microcontroller will have a built in analogue to digital controller with a blue/green illuminated LCD display. Voltage Supply 6V-30V Voltage Input 0-70V / 0-500V Voltage Resolution 100 mV Current Consumption 100mA LCD Backlight Current Input 0-10A (or more) Current Resolution mA Figure 1- performance table 1.2.3 Additional Specifications Because the Volt-Ammeter is designed with very few External components it will be made possible to meet the specifications fitting all the components onto a small PCB making it possible for the finished product to be a very handy and portable meter. The meter will be able to produce readings that are accurate, this is due to the calibrated software that is built in and additionally the 1%metal film resistors. There is only one supply voltage needed and this can be acquired by using any mains power supply. The completed meter will only consume 10mA from the backlight of the LCD screen when switched on and 3mA when not in use. When the 10 Ohm resistor is disconnected the backlight of the LCD display will be switched off   Ã‚   Figure 2 external components 1.2.5 Casing Specifications The casing needs to be compact so it can be hand held for ease of use. Compact with all wires concealed to illustrate a safe finished product. Waterproof for protection from electrocution and to prevent damage to components. Additional fittings for PCB placement. LCD Screen placement on front of casing. (central) CMOS FLASH-based 8-bit microcontroller. Performance speed of 200 Nano Seconds. Flash Program Memory. Program Memory 14 KB. 368 RAM Bytes. 2 x 8-bit, 1 x 16-bit Timers. Analogue to Digital Converter- 5 channel, 10-bit. 2 Comparators. Temperature Range -40 to 125 degrees Celsius. Figure 3 PIC Microcontroller 2.1.1 Voltmeter when measuring voltage between two points in an electrical or electronic circuit a certain device must be used. This device is a voltmeter and is intended to measure either direct current (DC) or alternating current (AC). There are two types of voltmeter, these devices are either analogue voltmeters or digital voltmeters. The analogue meter has a current meter in series with a high resistance. This high resistance is needed otherwise the circuit being tested will be disturbed due to a significant amount of current being drawn. A digital voltmeter displays numerical values; these values can range of 1000v to 3000v and can increase in powers of 10. 2.1.2 Ammeter An ammeter is the instrument needed to measure electrical current that flows through a circuit. The ampere or amp is the unit of measure for current. Conclusion The writing and design of this project has been made possible due to the applied theories and practical skills that I have learnt and administered in integrated circuit design. The knowledge I have gained has given me the skills to produce design and construct operating systems that are capable of performing practical tasks. Because of these skills it has given me the confidence to write design and produce this project which is titled The Design of a Volt-Ammeter using PIC microcontroller. http://pic-microcontroller.com/voltmeter-ammeter-using-pic-microcontroller/ http://www.microchip.com/wwwproducts/en/PIC16F876A http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/voltmeter http://study.com/academy/lesson/what-is-an-ammeter-definition-function-quiz.html

Sunday, January 19, 2020

Languages Spoken in Ethiopia :: essays research papers

There are almost as many languages as there are peoples in Ethiopia, about 80 in all. The languages come from a variety of families - Semitic, Hamitic, Nilotic and Omotic. Amharic, spoken in the country's heartland, is Ethiopia's official language, but Tigrinya, spoken in the north, and Orominya, spoken in the south, have semi-official status. The Oromos are the largest ethnic group in the country, and are made up of a muddle of Christians, Muslims and traditional animists. Amharic and Tigrinya use the Ge'ez script, with an understated 231 letters - keep an eye out for fabulously complex Amharic typewriters. Kids are taught English from junior high onward, and many people can speak a smattering or more. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church has dominated religious life in the country since the fourth century, when two brothers from Tyre began evangelizing with the blessing of the king. Ethiopian Orthodoxy has a strong monastic tradition, and until the Marxist revolution, there were Orthodox clergy in almost every town in the country. Orthodoxy combines more standard Christian beliefs in God, Catholic saints and Jesus (although there is more emphasis on the Old Testament than in many western churches) with traditional African beliefs about spirits and devils - church services often include dancing, astrology and fortune telling. Believers fast every Wednesday and Friday, avoiding meat, dairy and sometimes fish. Ethiopian literature is traditionally Christian, with the earliest writings in Ge'ez being translations of Greek Christian works. Ge'ez literary production really took off in the 13th century, when a stack of Coptic, Syriac and Greek religious works were translated from Arabic. About 200 years later, Ge'ez writers branched out into original works, beginning with the lives of saints and moving onto apocalyptic books such as the Elucidation of Jesus and the Mystery of Heaven and Earth. Amharic took over from Ge'ez around the 16th century, and again, writers concentrated mainly on translations of religious works. It wasn't until the end of WWII that Amharic writers really began writing about other issues - Makonnen Endalkaches, Kebede Mikael and Tekle Tsodeq Makuria are notable postwar writers who addressed moral and patriotic themes. Injera is the mainstay of the Ethiopian diet. This phenomenally bouncy bread is made from the peculiarly Ethiopian tef cereal.

Saturday, January 11, 2020

Supply Chain Management and Zara

Zara Case Analysis Operations Management MBM1110 Table of Contents Executive Summary 3 Introduction 3 Outstanding Operational strategies Layout 4 Forecasting 5 Product life cycle 5 Product Design and Supply Chain Management Marketing 5 Just in time 6 Vertical Integration 6 Incorporation of Bershka Conclusion 7 Bibliography 8 Executive Summary Zara, a flagship chain store of the Inditex group owned by Spanish business tycoon Amancio Ortega is one of the top names in the mid-priced fashion industry. Zara was established in 1975 in Acoruna, Galicia, Spain and has expanded to 1395 stores all across the globe.It is said that Zara, unlike any other retail organization in the clothing industry takes just two weeks to design, develop and get a new product into the stores. However, the retail industry has a six month average to do so. By using its operational strategies in a very successful manner, Zara is able to launch 10,000 new products every year. This report will discuss the operational strategies that Zara uses which works as order winners and order qualifiers. It also discusses the strategies that they use which makes them one of the top names in the fashion industry.Introduction Zara uses very innovative strategies for its business. By doing so, Zara is able to avoid outsourcing its manufacturing proce ss to low cost and developing countries like most of the other companies in the industry. Zara does not even spend a lot of money on marketing, hence increases its profit margin. It however does spend on the layout of its stores. Unlike many of its competitors, Zara is a vertically integrated retailer since it controls most of the step in it supply chain by designing, producing and distributing itself.This unique business model has resulted in the emergence of one of the most successful retailers in the fashion industry. Terry Hill in 1993 came up with the terms ? order qualifiers? and ? order winners? , against which it is believed that manufacturing strategy should be determined (Add Reff. Hill, T. (1993), Manufacturing Strategy: Text and Cases, 2nd ed. , Macmillan Press, London. ). Order Winners are characteristics that serve as a competitive advantage for one firm over others.Order winners enable the customers to choose a particular firms goods and services over the competitors. Order winners in this case for Zara are: y High-end fashion at a reasonable price Even though Zara ¶s products are highly fashionable, they comparatively cost way less compared to other big names in the fashion industry Supply Chain Management y As discussed below in the report, due to Zara ¶s outstanding SCM, it is able to order order the latest in fashion every two weeks for a reasonable price. Thus, are able to offer something to their clients that none of their competitors can.Order qualifiers are the competitive characteristics that a firm must take advantage of in order to be a viable competitor in the market place. To provide order qualifiers, companies need only to be in par with the competitors, however, in order to provide with order winners, companies need to be way better than its competition. Having said that, order qualifiers are in no way less important than the order winners, in fact, they both complement each other. In Zara ¶s case the order qualifiers are: y Quality They offer good quality products at relatively cheaper price compared to the competition.Outstanding Operational strategies While Zara maybe a very successful high end retailer, the main facet of Zara that has got academics buzzing is its completely novel approach to its operations and supply chain for a retailer in high-end fashion. Layout The main intention of a layout strategy is to develop an economically viable layout that will be in line with the company ¶s Competitive requirements (Render & Heizer, 2005). Zara invests a lot in their store layouts to make sure that their store maintains the fresh and trendy look.They have a testing facility close to their head office in Spain, where they test different types of store layouts on a regular basis. Zara remodels each of its stores every five years in order to keep up with the current trends (Zara ¶s Business Model, 2010). The entire layout, including the furniture and the window displays are all designed at the testin g facility in order to maintain a standardized image globally. A flying team from the head office usually flies down to a new location to set up the store. Their motto is that they want the store managers to focus more on sales than anything else.Zara can afford to do this since they do not spend lot advertising and marketing campaigns. Forecasting One of Zara ¶s major competitive advantage over other retailers is it technique of forecasting. Unlike, other retailers, Zara has developed its business model around reacting promptly. Zara focuses heavily on its forecasting effort on the amount and the type of fabric it will purchase. Zara tends to do this since it ¶s usually cheaper to rectify mistakes on raw fabric as compared to a finished product. It also uses the same fabric to produce something else (Render & Heizer, 2005).Zara usually buys un-processed fabric and colors it according to the season based on market ¶s immediate need. By doing that, and by combining it with a hi gh-speed garment design & production process, it ¶s able to the deliver what the market is actually looking for at that time. Product life cycle In a typical Product Life Cycle Curve of the fashion retail industry, sales decreases as products move across the times line. However, Zara ¶s Product Life Cycle Curve is totally the other way round since it is in a high fashion industry and it offers products that are of the latest trends and designs with a life of maximum 5-6 weeks.Product Design and Supply Chain Management The entire process of product design is very unique compared to its competitors. Commercial managers and designers at Zara start working on the design of the fabric, the costs, raw material, selling price etc as soon as they receive the instructions from the Zara stores. Instructions are issued to cut appropriate fabric as soon as approvals are received. All the raw materials are distributed for assembly to a network of small family owned businesses that are mostly in Glacia and in Northern Portugal.Unlike its competitors, Zara ¶s high-tech distribution services system ensures that there is no style lying around at the head office. The finished products are quickly cleared through the distribution centers and are shipped to the stores within 48 hours. Deliveries ¶ are received twice a week by each store. This entire process of product design and supply chain management gives Zara a huge edge over its competitors. Marketing Zara has a very unique approach to marketing compared to the other big players in the industry.Unlike its competition, which spends 3-4 % of total revenues on marketing and advertising campaigns, Zara spends 0. 3%. This is a major competitive advantage over its competitors. Zara strategically locates all of their stores in prime retail districts for  µvisibility marketing ¶. As mentioned earlier about the product development cycles, customers are rendered immune to visit Zara stores very often since new items are st ocked weekly and are often not re-stocked. Zara creates a feeling of scarcity within the customers, and this makes them come back to the store frequently and make purchases.Just in time Just-in-time (JIT) is a strategy that is used for inventory management in such a way that it helps a business improve its return on investment by reducing in-process inventory and the associated carrying costs (Shingo, 1989). Zara follows a true JIT inventory system. Its inventory system is influenced by the pull of the customer instead of a push from the designer. This helps Zara to have a competitive advantage over the competition since it has a very low inventory to sales ratio. Vertical IntegrationZara is a very vertically integrated company by working through the whole value chain and is highly capital intensive. This is a unique model that let the company develop a strong merchandising strategy that led it to create a unique model of fast fashion system (Craig, Jones, & Nieto, 2004). Incorporat ion of Bershka Most big brands in the world regardless of the industry they are in usually have more than one brand name. In the fashion retail industry, Gap Inc. Owns few big names as Gap itself, Old Navy, Club Monaco, etc. It is a strategy used to penetrate different segments of a market and to increase the market share.It also tries to give consumers an impression that different brand names have something different about them. Companies also use the is strategy to create a specific brand for each and every market they try to target. Inditex has also used the strategy of penetrating different segments of the market by creating a different brand name for each segment (Inditex Annual Report, 2008). Inditex owns different brands such as Zara, Massimo Dutti, Pull and Bear and Bershka which tends to cater to different markets. Merging all of these brands or any two brands into one name would not make a lot of business sense for Bershka.The brand Bershka was launched by Inditex in the y ear 1998 with an aim of targeting the young fashion-conscious crowd. Incorporating Bershka into Zara ¶s operations would not be a very good strategic move for Inditex. Bershka currently owns 638 stores in 41 different countries, hence incorporating that in to Zara ¶s operations would raise lot of challenges for Inditex. Since Bershka and Zara both have a very different target market, formulating strategies for both of these firms combined will definitely effect the operations of the company in whole. Both brand names have established different clientele for themselves.Bershka currently targets the young and fashionable and Zara targets the fashionable crowd as well, however it has different demographics for it. Combining these two brands into one will result in loss of loyal customers and might also impact the company negatively. There ¶s no guarantee that Bershka ¶s existing clientele will shift to Zara, in fact they might just end up losing majority of that segment. Zara ¶s market share might increase by a very small percentage; however Bershka might end up losing a major chunk of its current clientele, which in turn will not be good for Inditex in whole. Conclusion Read also: Advantages and Disadvantages of Administrative Management

Friday, January 3, 2020

Relationship Between Friends With Benefits - 1223 Words

Friends with benefits relationships are relatively new, but an increasingly popular phenomenon in our society. Defining this type of relationship can be complicated as there is no unique definition. For the most part, friends with benefits relationships adds a sexual component into a pre-existing friendship. However, every person has their own views about how they would define this kind of engagement. Despite the absence of a clear definition, friends with benefits is a controversial issue that often sparks strong emotions. There are so many factors that can dictate how these relationships start and end. The label â€Å"friends with benefits† is a commonly used label by the younger generation and it has become popular among older folks nowadays. So, shouldn’t any friendship have its own benefits? However, the phrase is used in a different context, one more convenient and less conventional. 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