Abstract:

Hand held gadget using Thermal printer provision.

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.

This project consists of a Microcontroller, 16X2 LCD and Thermal printer. Thermal printer is a small portable printer, easy to connect. It’s having serial, Parallel and I2c connectivity interface. We enable serial mode for this modem. We connect it to PC and run .net application and change to PC mode by pressing first button. After completing the data entry press second button for printing data. These two button combination is called as “Array of Buttons”. By using this application we can print any characters on Thermal paper using Thermal printer. Some modems support image printings also. The data which we expect to be printed on the paper should be entered in the Application text box. The same data will imposed on Thermal paper. We can even connect a 16×2 LCD to view the data which is printed on to the thermal paper. We can have text to voice conversion in our .net application, which converts the text to audible sounds.            Here we use 8051 as a microcontroller with 5v DC Power supply. Serial (UART) protocol is primary concern here.16X2 LCD is connected to microcontroller through Digital I/O lines. Thermal printer connected to microcontroller serially which works on ESC/POS commands.

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

.net application

APPLICATIONS

• Industries
• Billing machines
• Hand held Terminal