A Street light is a raised source of Light on the edge of a road or walkway, which is turned on or lit at a certain time every night. Major advantages of street lighting include prevention of accidents and increase in safety. Studies have shown that darkness results in a large number of crashes and fatalities. Street lighting has been found to reduce these accidents by approximately 50%. A number of street light control systems have been developed to control and reduce energy consumption of a town's public lighting system. In India the existing system controlling the street lights is manual. Automatic Street light control systems are in demand. The proposed Automatic Street Light Controller which is controlled by using an Android Phone and a microcontroller. This system also has another module called user complaint raising application, this application will be installed in user’s android phone, using which they can complaint about their Locality Street lights if any problem found.

1. Peer Reviewed Online International Journal Volume 1, Issue 1, May 2014 161
Development of an Android Based Street Light
Conrol and Complaint Raising Application
Anjana A
Dept of Computer Science and Engineering
YD Institute of Technology
Bangalore, India
anjanaanju195@gmail.com
Sridevi K
Dept of Computer Science and Engineering
YD Institute of Technology
Bangalore, India
srid456@gmail.com
Bhagyashree P Bhat
Dept of Computer Science and Engineering
YD Institute of Technology
Bangalore, India
bhatbhagya25@gmail.com
Sunil Kumar R
Dept of Computer Science and Engineering
YD Institute of Technology
Bangalore, India
sunilkumarbe49@gmail.com
Abstract
A Street light is a raised source of Light on the edge of a
road or walkway, which is turned on or lit at a certain time
every night. Major advantages of street lighting include pre-
vention of accidents and increase in safety. Studies have
shown that darkness results in a large number of crashes and
fatalities. Street lighting has been found to reduce these ac-
cidents by approximately 50%. A number of street light con-
trol systems have been developed to control and reduce en-
ergy consumption of a town's public lighting system. In In-
dia the existing system controlling the street lights is manu-
al. Automatic Street light control systems are in demand.
The proposed Automatic Street Light Controller which is
controlled by using an Android Phone and a microcontroller.
This system also has another module called user complaint
raising application, this application will be installed in user’s
android phone, using which they can complaint about their
Locality Street lights if any problem found.
Keywords
Automatic Street light control, Android Phone and micro-
controller.
Introduction
Here we propose to device and design a Automatic Street
Light Controller which is controlled by using a Micro-
Controller and an Android Phone. The street lights are oper-
ated in three modes namely
• LDR mode
• Timer mode
• Manual mode
In LDR mode street lights are switched on/off based
on the presence of sunlight. In the presence of sunlight street
light are switched off. In the absence of sunlight that is dur-
ing night time the street lights are automatically switched on.
Each street light is provided LDR sensor which sense the
intensity of sunlight.
In timer mode on/off time is scheduled , The scheduler
keeps track of timing related details which are fed in the
phone by the user and then the control signals are passed
wirelessly to the control panel which in-turn controls the
various lights.
In manual mode permissions will be given to switch
on/off the street lights manually. For example, consider
street A and street B which are permitted to operate manual-
ly. Only these street lights can be operated manually and

2. International Journal of Innovatory Research in Engineering and Technology – IJIRET www.ijirusa.webs.com
Peer Reviewed Online International Journal Volume 1, Issue 1, May 2014 162
other street lights cannot be operated. This mode mainly
helpful for repairing purpose. It also has unique feature of
getting the status of street lights.
The second module user complaint raising application is
developed. This application will be provided to the public
users using which they can register the complaints about
their locality street lights if any damage found.
Related Work
In today’s world, power saving is very important and dif-
ficult. Though there are many power generation methods, it
has become very difficult due to insufficient resources. So,
saving of power is very essential. But the majority of exist-
ing public lighting systems still uses obsolete technology
some as old as the 1960’s high pressure mercury lamp sys-
tems. Mercury lights may emit poisonous rays which may
cause harm to the surrounding environment. Some existing
technology such as Power Line carrier (PLC) can also be
used for the purpose of the individual lamp control and mon-
itoring. But PCL technology has some problem such as
noise, the changing of lines input impedance, carrier signal
attenuation that often lead to communication failure. Manu-
al control is prone to errors and leads to energy wastages and
manually dimming during mid night is impracticable. Also,
dynamically tracking the light level is manually impractica-
ble.
Architecture
The front End of the field officer and the complaint raising
application will be made using Android. The applications
will be running on an android based smart phone. The archi-
tecture of this system consists PIC18microcontroller,
LDR(light dependent resistor), GSM, LCD and Relays. The
communication between the Android phone and the target
devices will be through GSM. The control panel is also wire-
lessly connected to a centralized control system through
GSM. An 8 bit microcontroller is a self-contained system
with memory, a processor and peripherals that can be used
as an embedded system. LDR is installed in each street lights
to sense the sunlight as shown in the figure 1. L1, L2, L3
and L4 indicates the LDR of street lights B1, B2, B3 and B4
respectively. Relays are used for switching on/off the street
lights according to the received control commands. The
voltage monitoring circuitry monitors the voltage between
the poles and informs whether the supply to the bulbs is cor-
rect or not.
The complaint raising application is designed using an-
droid. In the main office the user complaints will be received
through GSM and stored in the database. The central Data-
base will be maintained in a server at the base station. This
code will be developed in Visual Basic .Net and will also be
able to connect to a GSM MODEM.
Figure 1: Basic Block diagram of the Street light
Control System
Figure 2: centralized system
Micro-controller PIC18
L
1
L
2
L
3
L
4
Relay control
mechanism
B
1
B
2
B
3
B
4
GSM
modem
Android
phone
Voltage
measure-
ment cir-
cuitry
PC GSM Complaint
raising
applica-
tion

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Peer Reviewed Online International Journal Volume 1, Issue 1, May 2014 163
Figure 3: street light model in the presence of sunlight
Figure 4: street light model in the absence of sunlight
The above snapshots represents the street light model
which consists of four street lights all in one side and one
more lamp to act as sunlight on the other side of the model.
In figure3 sunlight is on and hence all the street lights are
switched off automatically. In figure4 sunlight is off and
hence all the street lights are switched on.
Figure 5: Home screen
Figure 6: LDR Activity

4. International Journal of Innovatory Research in Engineering and Technology – IJIRET www.ijirusa.webs.com
Peer Reviewed Online International Journal Volume 1, Issue 1, May 2014 164
Figure 7: Timer Activity for on time
Figure 8: Timer activity for off time
Figure 8A: Manual Activity
Figure 9: Status Activity
The above snapshot is a status activity screen which gives
status of each street light. As per in the snapshot street light
A and B are switched on and street light C and D are
switched off. The current running mode is manual mode.

5. International Journal of Innovatory Research in Engineering and Technology – IJIRET ww.ijirusa.webs.com
Peer Reviewed Online International Journal Volume 1, Issue 1, May 2014 165
Figure 10: Receiving and storing User Complaints in
main Office
Figure 11: User Complaint Raising Application
The figure 10 is a snapshot of receiving and storing the
user complaints in the main office and figure 11 is a snap-
shot of user complaint raising application in which user will
select the street light with the appropriate problem that is
sent to the main office. The main office will also receive the
latitude and longitude of each user complaints and founds
the location from where the complaint is registered.
Conclusion
Automatic Street Light Controller which is controlled
by using a Micro-Controller and an Android Phone which is
equipped with a scheduler keeps track of timing related de-
tails which are fed in the phone by the user and then the con-
trol signals are passed wirelessly to the control panel which
in-turn controls the various lights. The system can also re-
ceive complaints from different areas and the message can
be passed on to concerned field officer. Thus proposed street
lighting system saves power at greater extent and provides
night-time safety for community members and road user’s,
provides public lighting at cost effective manner.
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