International Research Journal of Engineering and Technology (IRJET) e-ISSN: 2395-0056

Volume: 06 Issue: 06 | June 2019 www.irjet.net p-ISSN: 2395-0072

Design of a Portable Contact-less Tachometer using Infrared Sensor for

Laboratory Application
Varnika Dwivedi1, Ravindra Parab2, Satyendra Sharma3
1,2SAME, Symbiosis University of Applied Sciences, Indore
3Professor, SAME, Symbiosis University of Applied Sciences, Indore, India
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Abstract:- A tachometer is a device that measures the on the LCD display. The screen is refreshed after each
rotational speed of a shaft or disk in motor or other machines. second. The sensor unit used for measurement is IR sensor
This paper presents the design of a simple, easy to implement and the processing unit used is Arduino-Uno. The measured
contactless tachometer using low cost linear digital integrated value is displayed using a 16X2 LCD module. This kind of
circuits (ICs). This tachometer can be easily used for both tachometer can employed in the region where speed is unit
industrial and laboratory purposes where it should be able to of measurement and size and precision is a factor. This
measure rpm and display reading in revolutions per minute model can be employed in vehicles and robotic arms. This is
(RPM) on the liquid crystal display (LCD module). This device also used in aircraft, rails and traffic engineering to estimate
is an embedded system; it is built using an alpha-numeric traffic speed and volume.
liquid crystal display (LCD) module and an infrared system to
detect the rotation of the machine whose speed is being Digital tachometers are preferable due to its better accuracy,
measured. The system is economical and has wide applications no A/D conversion, less maintenance (as they are brushless)
in automobile industry and medical field. Tachometer plays a and noise immunity. A digital tachometer works on the
vital role in measurement of speed of any rotating device and principle of frequency measurement which has two distinct
it is essential for any control system especially in approaches which are –
servomechanism. Most of the controllers employed in the
industry to control industrial process use a tachometer which (1) Measurement of elapsed time between successive pulses.
gives the provision of feedback in a control circuit. It can (2) Counting the number of pulses in a fixed period of time.
measure the speed of rotating objects (examples of rotating
objects include: a bike tyre, a car tyre, or any other motor) in 2. BACKGROUNGD
the most accurate form possible. In automotives, it is used as a
gauge showing the speed of the engine shaft that is driving the In olden days tachometers were completely mechanical, but
transmission, usually in thousands of rotations per minute. tachometers have changed due to development of modern
technology. The first mechanical tachometer was similar in
Key Words: tachometer, revolutions per minute, arduino operation to a centrifugal governor. The inventor of the first
uno, infrared sensor, speed measurement. mechanical tachometer is assumed to be a German engineer
Dietrich Uhlhorn; he used it for measuring the speed of
1. INTRODUCTION machines in 1817. Since after then, it has been used to
measure the speed of locomotives in automobiles, trucks,
In this modern era of industrialization most of the industries tractors and aircrafts. Early tachometer designs were based
contain rotating objects such as motor, rotor etc for its on the principle of mono stable multi vibrator, which has one
proper monitoring its speed has to be measured and stable state and one quasi stable state. The circuit remained
controlled. For such measurements, there are many methods in a stable state, producing no output. However when it
and one of such method is use of tachometer. Tachometer is receives triggering current pulse from the ignition system,
an instrument which measures the speed of any rotating the circuit transitions to the quasi stable state for a given
objects in revolution per minute (RPM). There exist time before returning again to the stable state. This way,
mechanical tachometers, where direct contact between each ignition pulse produced a clean pulse of fixed duration
motor and the tachometer is needed for measurement of that was fed to the gauge mechanism. The more of such fixed
RPM. This kind of tachometers requires regular maintenance duration pulses the gauge received per second, the higher it
and is complicated to use. These instruments suffer from read. The mono stable multi vibrator is still used in
wear and tear. Hence there is a requirement for a contactless tachometers today, although the tendency is to use voltage
digital tachometer which can be easily used with monitoring pulses rather than current pulses, the latter requiring that
system. This paper is about contact-less digital tachometer the ignition coil current passes through the tachometer on
designed using infrared methodology. It works on the its way to the coils. Later designs of tachometer were in no
principle that the number of times the IR receiver- way to do any improvement on the early type; indeed the
transmitter circuit is cut and re-established in a second gives change seemed to have been made to be more economical.
the number of rotations per second. The value is displayed Integrated Circuit (IC) where in their infancy in the late

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 International Research Journal of Engineering and Technology (IRJET) e-ISSN: 2395-0056
Volume: 06 Issue: 06 | June 2019 www.irjet.net p-ISSN: 2395-0072

1960's and was both expensive and not proven to be robust 4. SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE
in automobile applications.
The system works mainly on infrared transmission principle.
3. WORKING PRINCIPLE It has mainly controlling unit, sensing unit display unit and
motor. The object of interest I.e. motor is placed in front of
Tachometer is an RPM counter which counts the no. of sensors. The sensor has IR LED and photodiode and the IR
rotation per minute. There are two types of tachometer one LED emits continuous beam of light rays. When motor starts
mechanical and other one is digital. Here we have designed rotating this light ray will be interrupted. The light ray will
an Arduino based digital tachometer using IR sensor module be rebound back and will be absorbed by the photodiode.
to detect object for count rotation of any rotating body. As IR This interruption of light ray is continuous in each and every
transmits IR rays which reflect back to IR receiver and then rotation. This results in pulse of light ray that is fed to the
IR Module generates an output or pulse which is detected by microcontroller. The microcontroller counts the number of
the arduino controller when we press start button. It counts pulses and that in turn is the number of rotations. This
continuously for 5 seconds. obtained value will be displayed on the LCD screen.
Tachometer using arduino is shown in figure 2.
After 5 seconds arduino calculate RPM for a minute using
given formula.
RPM= Count x 12 for single object rotating body.
But here we demonstrate this project using ceiling fan. So we
have done some changes that is given below:
RPM=count x 12 / objects
where object = number of blades in fan.
The methodology employed in this work is shown in the
Figure 1 below.

Fig-2: Tachometer using Arduino

4.1 Arduino-Uno

The Arduino-uno is microcontroller which is shown in

Figure 3.The board is equipped with set of digital and analog
input/output pins that may be interfaced o various
expansion boards or breadboard and other circuits. The
boards feature serial communications interfaces including
USB (universal serial bus) on some models which are also
used for loading programs. The microcontroller is typically
Fig-1: Block Diagram showing Working Principle of programmed using a dialect of features from the
Contactless Tachometer programming languages c and c++ in addition to using
traditional compiler tool chains, the Arduino project.
The hardware components required for the above system
are given below:
1. Arduino
2. IR sensor Module
3. 16x2 LCD Display
4. Push button
5. Bread board
6. 9 volt battery
7. Connecting wires Fig-3: Arduino-Uno

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 International Research Journal of Engineering and Technology (IRJET) e-ISSN: 2395-0056
Volume: 06 Issue: 06 | June 2019 www.irjet.net p-ISSN: 2395-0072

4.2 Infrared (IR) sensor

An infrared sensor which is shown in Figure 4 is an

electronic instrument which is used to sense certain
characteristics of its surroundings by either emitting
detecting infrared radiation. These sensors function by using
a certain light sensor to detect a light wavelength in the IR
spectrum. By the use of an LED, which produces light at the
same wavelength as the sensor detects, we can study the Fig.-5: Liquid crystal display (LCD)
intensity of the received light. At the time when the object is
near the sensor, the light from the LED bounces off the object 5. CIRCUIT OPERATION
and into the light sensor. This results in increment in energy
on a large scale intensity, which we can detect using a
threshold. Infrared sensors are also capable of measuring
the heat being emitted by an object and detecting motion. IR
transceiver is used here for determining the number of
rotations of the motor shaft per second. This is done by
counting the number of times the slot comes in line of sight
with the transmitter receiver pair.

Fig-4: Infrared sensor

4.3 LCD 16x2 Fig-6: Circuit Diagram of Digital Contactless Tachometer

The LCD screen which is shown in Figure 5 is more energy As shown in the above tachometer circuit of Figure 6, it
efficient and can be disposed of more safely than a CRT can. contains Arduino Pro Mini, IR sensor module, buzzer and
Its low electrical power consumption enables it to be used in LCD. Arduino controls the whole the process like reading
battery powered electronic equipment more efficiently than pulse that IR sensor module generate according to object
CRTs can be a 16x2 LCD display is used in the project which detection, calculating RPM and sending RPM value to LCD. IR
displays the count or number of rotation. LCDs are used in a sensor is used for sensing object. We can set sensitivity of
wide range of applications including LCD televisions, this sensor module by inbuilt potentiometer situated on IR
computer monitors, instrument panels. Small LCD screens module. IR sensor module consist an IR transmitter and a
are common in portable consumer devices such as digital photo diode which detects or receives infrared rays. IR
cameras, watches, calculators, and mobile telephones, transmitter transmits infrared rays, when these rays fall on
including smartphones. LCD screens are also used on any surface, they reflect back and sensed by photo diode. The
consumer electronics products such as DVD players, video output of photo diode is connected to a comparator, which
game devices and clocks. LCD screens have replaced heavy, compare photo diode output with reference voltage and
bulky cathode ray tube (CRT) displays in nearly all result is given as output to arduino. Operation of infrared
applications. LCD screens are available in a wider range of module in contactless tachometer is shown in Figure 7.
screen sizes than CRT and plasma displays, with LCD screens
available in sizes ranging from tiny digital watches to very
large television receivers.

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 International Research Journal of Engineering and Technology (IRJET) e-ISSN: 2395-0056
Volume: 06 Issue: 06 | June 2019 www.irjet.net p-ISSN: 2395-0072

6. RESULT

We have designed the circuit to work with least error. We

have checked the circuit up to the primary level and it is
successfully capable to determining the speed of the motor.
Whenever any rotating motor is detected within the range of
the circuit, the input starts to flow to the arduino board and
thus resulting in its speed detection. Complete circuit is
verified and tested.

7. CONCLUSION

The tachometer circuit is a digital innovative device that is

active in measuring the speed of a rotating object. In this
modern world all industries have motors whose speed has to
be monitored properly. This device is nothing but a simple
Fig-7: Operation of Infrared Module in Contactless electronic digital transducer. Normally, it is used for
Tachometer measuring the speed of a rotating shaft. The number of
revolutions per minute (rpm) is valuable information for
understanding any rotational system. We have tried
IR sensor module output pin is directly connected to pin 18 maximum in bringing up this contactless tachometer. This is
(A4). Vcc and GND are connected to Vcc and GND of arduino. low cost and gives proper output. Therefore, the circuit of
A 16x2 LCD is connected with arduino in 4-bit mode. Control our paper was designed and implemented and the speed of
pin RS, RW and En are directly connected to arduino pin 2, the motor is displayed on the LCD display every second.
GND and 3. And data pin D4-D7 is connected to pins 4, 5, 6
and 7 of arduino. A push button is also added in this project. REFERENCES
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Volume: 06 Issue: 06 | June 2019 www.irjet.net p-ISSN: 2395-0072

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