Low Power Microcontroller Based Simple Smart Token Number Display System

The inconvenience encountered in many public dealing places like restaurants, banks, canteens etc. where people normally follow queue system has called for many solutions to speed up and ease the dealings. In this paper we show a low power microcontroller based smart token number display system to overcome the inconvenience mentioned above. This system is used to display two digit numbers from 0 to 99 using two sets of display units, one being user display and the other, customer display. Using this system the customers need not wait in the queue but come to get their order once their token number is displayed in the large customer display. It consists of two portions: a display unit and a processing unit. The software design in the processing unit is accomplished using PIC16F877A microcontroller. The power saving mode is achieved by putting the microcontroller in sleep mode. A peripheral keypad is interfaced with the microcontroller. Each set of display unit consists of two seven segment displays which get input from a BCD decoder/driver operating in open collector configuration. The token number display system with low power mode mentioned here is unique in the sense that it is controlled by software to go in sleep mode to save power.