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2017 International Conference on Computation of Power,Energy, Information and Communication (ICCPEIC)

SPEED CONTROL OF CEILING FAN USING

PWM TECHNIQUE
Shivesh1, Rishabh Mishra2, and Dr. E.Annie Elisabeth3
1,2
Students in Electrical an Electronics engineering, Sathyabama University, Chennai-600048, and Assistant Professor3 in
Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Sathyabama University, Chennai-600048.

Abstract:
—Automisation plays a vital role in humans everyday life
and the role of automatic control has increased significantly.
Automisation is a vast advanced technological area whose
is at maximum position, full voltage will be applied to the
motive is to develop control strategies and upgrade the
motor as there is no external resistance in the circuit as shown
performance applied to a device. One of such device is the
in fig 1.
fan. The traditional system fans are available with manual
speed control depending on the requirements speed is
controlled. Usually, the traditional system fans run at high
speed at high temperature and low at lower temperature. In
this paper, to contro the speed of the fan a circuit comprising
of microcontroller PIC16F877A, temperature
sensor,ultrasonic sensor, optocoupler circuit, BLDC motor
and few electronic components is used. Moreover an
ultrasonic sensor is used for automatic detection of human Fig 1. Resistive type fan regulator
body in the room depending on which the fan gets operated
and LCD is used to display the temperature, no. of people in B)TRAIC based (dimmer or stepless type) regulator:
the room and the speed of the fan.
Keywords- Automisation, Microcontroller, Ultrasonic sensor, The gate current controls the current flowing through the
Temperature sensor,BLDC motor TRIAC, the speed of the motor fan is controlled as shown in
fig 2. This type of regulator offers step less speed control.
I. INTRODUCTION : They are expensive than resistive type regulators. The main
The basic need of automatic speed control is to reduce the drawbacks are harmonic distortion, which causes fan motor to
consumption of power and human effort. In the traditional heat up and produces a humming noise.
system there is wastage of electrical energy and it is controlled
manually. To overcome the drawbacks of the traditional
system an automatic control system of the fan is proposed.
This application note introduces a method for controlling a
Brushless DC motor. This motor is widely used in ceiling fans
[1]. It is low cost, low maintenance, and has direct connection
to the AC power source. Using the PIC16F877A
microcontroller series combined with the basic TRIAC
topology is cost-performance solution.
The three traditional methods of speed control are : Fig 2. TRIAC based regulator

A) Conventional fan regulator (Resistive type): C) Capacitive Type(Stepped Regulator):

When the knob is at position 1, the maximum resistance is Various combinations of capacitors is used to control the
added in series with the brushless DC motor of the fan. When speed of the fan. When the capacitance is increased then the
the knob is moved to position 2, resistance R12 will be voltage across the capacitor is decreased, allowing more
dropped out.The resistance in series decreases. When the knob voltage across the fan motor. Hence, capacitance increases,

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Shivesh et al: SPEED CONTROL OF CEILING FAN USING PWM TECHNIQUE

speed of the fan motor also increases. The capacitive type ultrasonic sensor and a microcontroller are used to control the
regulator is shown in fig 3. fan automatically. The temperature sensor gives

an analog voltage output per degree change in temperature.

Depending upon the surrounding temperature the speed of the
fan varies high, low and average for higher, lower and
moderate temperature [4].
An ultrasonic sensor is used to detect the presence of human
body inside the room. As soon as the human body is detected
Fig 3. Capacitive type regulator by the ultrasonic sensor, the fan will be switched on
automatically and it also counts the number of human bodies
Drawbacks of the conventional system:
present in the room. The fan will get switched off
automatically when there is no one inside the room. The
The speed of the fan is controlled manually using a regulator.
various electronic devices used in the circuit are ADC(Analog
Depending on the atmospheric temperature the speed is being
to digital converter), LCD display, Optocoupler, TRIAC
regulated manually maximum at higher temperature and
switches and BLDC fan motor. The block diagram of the
minimum at lower temperature. Power consumption is high
automatic speed control of the fan is shown in fig 4.[5].
and there is wastage of power. The speed of the fan does not
vary automatically. Harmonic distortion is produced which
leads to the heating of the motor of the fan.

II. Automatic Speed Control Of the Fan Using

PWM technique:

The method proposed for automatic speed control of the fan

uses PWM technique. In this technique there are two methods
namely On-Off control method and In phase control method .
In the on-off control method TRIAC switch connects the load
to the ac source for few cycles and then disconnects it for
another few cycles of the source voltage. In phase control
method TRIAC switch connects the load to the ac source for a
moment in each cycle. The reliable control over the ceiling fan
dc motor can be attained by combination of
microcontroller(PIC16F877A) and the phase angle control
using a TRIAC switch [2].
Automatic speed control of the fan motor is attained by PWM
technique which is also known as Voltage Vs. Frequency
method. When there is an increase in speed, the response from
the motor is quicker with change in reference frequency. This
system has high efficiency and good performance. The voltage
Vs. frequency reduces the magnetized current at lower
frequency and also by lowering the motor voltage. Many Fig 4. Block Diagram for the automatic speed control of the
motors can be controlled at a time using voltage Vs. frequency fan.
method [3].
Various modifications are done to get over the drawbacks of The above diagram depicts the automatic method of speed
the conventional methods. Here a temperature sensor and control of the fan. As per the diagram, AC input is given to the

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2017 International Conference on Computation of Power,Energy, Information and Communication (ICCPEIC)

circuit which passes through the rectifier and gets converted Speed (rpm)
into dc. This dc voltage is then given to the PIC16F877A
microcontroller. For temperature sensor and the ultrasonic
sensor, dc voltage is given as the input. The circuit diagram of
the automatic speed control of the fan is shown in fig 5.

Temperature(F)Æ
Fig 6.waveform for (0 – 50)F temperature

Speed (rpm)

Temperature(F)Æ
Fig 7. waveform for (51-150) F temperature

Speed(rpm)
Fig 5. Circuit Diagram for automatic speed control of fan.

III. SIMULATION CIRCUIT AND RESULTS:

Temperatur(F)Æ
Fig 8. waveform for (151 –2 50) F temperature

The above three graphs represent the speed control of the fan
with respect to three different temperature ranges. The speed
of the motor becomes 25% for the temperature range of (0-
50)F. For the temperature ranges of (51-150) F and (151-
250)F the speed becomes 50% and 100% respectively. The
simulation output result is shown in tabulation form in table 1.
Fig 6. simulation circuit

The fig 6 shows the simulation circuit of the Speed Control Of

ceiling fan. The simulation results for the three different
ranges of temperature are shown below.

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Shivesh et al: SPEED CONTROL OF CEILING FAN USING PWM TECHNIQUE

Table 1. Simulation result

Table 2. Hardware output
TEMPERATURE(C) SPEED (%)
(0-20) 25% Temperature No. Of Speed
(degree people (%)
celsius) detected
(20-30) 50% (0-20) 1-2 25%
(20-30) 2-3 50%
(30-40) 3-4 75%
(30-50) 100%
(40 & above) 4 & above 100%

From the above table it is clearly seen that the fan speed
increases with respect to the increase in room temperature and
number of people present in the room.The output results of
When a graph is plotted between room temperature and speed both simulation circuit and hardware circuit are compared and
of the fan, a linear relationship is formed between temperature it shows similar result. The graphical comparison of
and speed. The graphical representation of the speed control of simulation output and hardware output is shown in fig 12.
the ceiling fan is shown in fig 9.

Fig 9. Increase of speed with temperature.

Fig 12. Comparison between simulation and hardware output.

IV. HARDWARE CICUIT AND RESULT:

The hardware circuit for speed control of ceiling fan by PWM
technique using BLDC motor is shown in fig 10. The main V. CONCLUSION
components used in controlling the speed of fan the circuit are
PIC16F877A microcontroller, BLDC motor, optocoupler
circuit, ultrasonic sensor, temperature sensor and transformer. In this paper, a new technique of speed control of ceiling fan
The output result of the hardware circuit for speed control of with respect to the room temperature and the number of
ceiling fan is very much similar to the output result of the
human body present inside the room is proposed. To sense the
simulation circuit. The table showing the output of the
room temperature and the number of human body present in
hardware circuit is given in table 2.
the room, appropriate temperature sensors and ultrasonic
sensors are chosen respectively. PIC16F877A microcontroller
along with optocoupler is used to control the fan speed. A
LCD screen is used to display the room temperature, speed of
motor and number of human body present inside the room.
When a human body enters the room the ultrasonic sensor
senses the human body and the fan starts to rotate i.e.; gets
switched on. The temperature sensor senses the room
temperature according to which the fan speed increases or
decreases. For high temperature the speed is high and for low
temperature the speed of the fan is low. This method of speed
control is economical, saves energy and uses less human
effort.

Fig 10. Hardware circuit for speed control of fan.

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VI. REFERENCES:

[1].Ranjana Singh, Sangeeta, Sunita, -“Single Phase Speed

Control of Induction Motor Using Android Bluetooth”
Department of Electronic and Communication Engineering,
Buddha Institute of Technology, Gida, Gorakhpur, Uttar
Pradesh, India. Research Vol. 6, Issue 5,pp.4814-4816,May
2016.

[2].Vikas Vats and Upendra Kumar-” Speed control of fan

based on room temperature by using programable logic
controller.” International Journal of Recent Scientific
Research, Research.Vol. 6, Issue 4, pp.3537-3539, April, 2015

.
[3].Mustafa Saad, Hossam Abdoalgader, and Muammer
Mohamed “Fan Speed Control System Using Microcontroller
“6th Int'l Conference on Electrical, Electronics & Civil
Engineering. Research Vol. 2,pp.86-89 (ICEECE'2014) Nov.
27-28, 2014 Cape Town, South Africa

[4].R.Suneeth, P.Usha –”Speed Control of Single Phase

Induction Motor Using AC Chopper by Asymmetrical PWM
Method”- International Journal of Advanced Research in
Electrical, Electronics and Instrumentation Engineering Vol.
3, Issue 10, pp.12415-12422 October 2014.

[5]. Gavish Bhatia- “ Room Temperature based Fan Speed

Control System using Pulse Width modulation”-
International Journal of Computer Applications, Volume 81 –
No5, pp.0975-8887, November 2013 “.

[6].DRM039 — Single Phase AC Induction Motor Control

Designer Reference Manual

[7].MC9RS08KA2 MC9RS08KA1 Data Sheet

[8].RS08 Core Reference Manual

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