Abstract:

E-payment for home and commercial needs with GPRS communication using TCP/IP protocol with Ticket printing by Thermal printer.

In these modern days everything is getting automated, thus reducing the manual and effort and save lot of time. Paying bills for home needs is in manual process which takes lot of time and even there are possibilities for human error. In this project we avoid such manipulations and save time. Instead of written signed paper bills, E writing (printing) is the best option to avoid human errors and saving time.  Here in this project we use thermal printer for printing text data on Thermal paper. We could update data to web server wireless protocols. These web connected applications belong to server client relation. TCP, UDP and HTTP protocols are used in this concept. Data transfer to web server through GPRS (General packet radio services) communication. We can transfer long data through this GPRS. Many Embedded Networking applications fall under this model only. This project comprises of a 16X2 LCD and 4X4 keypad, thermal printer and GSM/GPRS modem.   This project is useful for payments of electricity, water, cable TV…etc. service man enter bill in hand held terminal and generates slip. Microcontroller takes units as inputs and calculate price of total units. These units and corresponding bill will be printed on Thermal paper through Thermal printer. The same data can be seen on LCD display. This data will be stored in microcontroller which in turn develops a TCP/IP stack with standard format. Finally GSM/GPRS modem transmits this stack data to Web server with IP address and port number. Web server maintain data base of all information with respective time. Finally Department can knows the total information about the bills generated. After payment of bills, data of that particular customer will be removed from the data base.

        Here we use 8051 microcontroller with 5V DC Power supply.  Serial (UART) protocol is primary concern here. The main heart of this project is GSM/GPRS modem which works on GPRS AT commands. 16X2 LCD is connected to microcontroller through Digital I/O lines. AT keyboard is interface to microcontroller with PS/2 connection. 4X4 keypad is directly connected to microcontroller. Thermal printer connected to microcontroller serially and it works on ESC/POS commands, but microcontroller has only one serial port so that we have to use serial shift driver (built with relays or driver ics – depends on availability and possibility).

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS:

HARDWARE SPECIFICATIONS

Micro controller         :           AT89x series

Crystal                        :           11.0592 MHz

LCD                            :           HD44780

LED                            :           5mm Red LED

Printer                         :           Thermal printer (miniature)

Basic GPIOs

GSM/GPRS modem   :           Sim300/ Sim 900

RS232 interface          :           ST/MAX: 232

POWER SUPPLY

Transformer                :           12V step down 

Filter                           :           1000uf/25V

Voltage Regulator      :           7805 / 7812

SOFTWARE SPECIFICATIONS

Software tools used

Keil IDE

Proteus VSM

UC flash

Web server

.net application

APPLICATIONS

• Government departments like (Electricity, ration, Water……….etc)
• Cable TV bills System Hand held Terminal
• commercial