Development of an Embedded System for Low Power Message Display Using Scanning Technique

Abstract

Electronic display is now the most conventional means of presenting information all over the world. Due to its attractive brightness and simple operability, it is one of the most popular medium of presenting different types of information to the mass people. The display elements in an embedded system consume the major portion of the total power required to run the whole system. When large amount of display elements are used power dissipation issue becomes acute. In many cases special cooling arrangements like heat sink, cool air circulation, fan etc. are used to keep the system workable. The demand of low power consumption for embedded systems motivates to explore new approaches for managing power. This project proposes an alternative approach to develop a low power consuming embedded system for message display by introducing a new scanning technique. In the proposed system a controller scans all the display units continuously to ensure that only one unit is on at any given time. In this way power consumption will be much lower than that of existing static display system. Here a 'Muslim Calendar' containing date, time and prayer times for five salah has been developed as a test case. Seven segment displays are used as display units.