A Prototype of an Arduino-Based Protection System to Overcome Voltage Fluctuations

Poor quality of power supply can often cause power surges, spikes and voltage fluctuations which causing flickering lights, failure of household electrical devices, interference of TV reception, etc. This problem needs the protection system immediately. Otherwise, that can break the function and utility of electronic devices. Therefore, this paper presents prototype of an Arduino-based protection system that might be able to protect home devices from voltage fluctuations either caused by under or over voltage issues. This simple prototype is consisted of two parts: DC power supply and protection device. AC power source is downscaled into DC voltage (as we are mainly concerned with the RMS value) which will deliver the electricity to the protection device so that the Arduino will be ready to send the signal to LCD to show the value of load and voltage. Then, NO-NC relay will “cutoff” the load whenever an abnormal situation is happened. This prototype makes use of DC variable regulator to quickly simulate the fluctuation of AC source after it is rectified. The protection range in DC voltage is set into two parameters which are from 3V to 5V and 10V to 15V, respectively. There is no battery implementation yet in this prototype, so that it will not be able to protect the device efficiently due to some unwanted situation like blackout. But, this prototype can be modified into an automated multi battery charger which why the prototype has also set these two ranges as the normal rate of voltages.