Alcohol Detector With Engine Shut Down

Chapter one

Introduction

• background of the study

At present drunken drivers have increased enormously and so, the deaths due to drunken drivers. The main reason for drunk driving is that the police are not able to check each and every car and even if they catch any one the police can be easily bribed. So there is a need for an effective system to check drunken drivers.

There are different types of vehicle accidents which occurred in day to day lifetime with variety of causes. Accidents may happen due to many reason, it may be a brake system failure, it may occurred due to over drunken driver (person) or due to over speeding. Accidents that are due to drunken drivers and over speed driving are totally eliminated by applying control mechanism accordingly. Starting from this point of view we make a system which is installed inside the vehicle that eradicates the vehicle accident caused due to a drunken driver (Amit Kumar Tripathy et al, 2016)

Our project is to design and develop a system to bring the best solution toavoid such vehicle accidents happening due to drunken driver or driving under influence (DUI). The alcohol concentration sensor MQ-3 that detects the amount of alcohol taken by the driver and accordingly the microcontrollerdoes analysis and takes a decision on the motor of the vehicle if the amount of alcohol detected is greater than the threshold value the ignition of the motor is prevented from switching or starting (H.M Mohamad et al, 2013). In case the alcohol penetration speed in the blood may varies then it is difficult to detect at the starting but gradually as the time goes the driver breath  with the correct content of alcohol that he/she have inside but since the circuitry is always active then it would send a signal through the relay circuit and induce the alarm & Indicators (display the amount on LCD) and hence it can cutoff the engine as soon as the blood alcohol content is higher than the threshold value but also enabling a person who is not drunk to drive the same vehicle exact concentration of the alcohol from the breath it may increase with the time hence the detection. Alcohol detector project in vehicle is designed for the safety of the people sitting inside the vehicle. Alcohol breath analyzer project should be fitted inside the vehicle (S P Bhumkar et al, 2012).

Here we are using arduinoUno microcontroller for the controlling of motor of the vehicle according to the data pattern produced at the input port of the micro controller to produce the appropriate decision action will be taken. The arduino microcontroller is the heart of this project. It is the CPU of the complete circuit. The MQ-3 alcohol sensor senses the concentration of blood alcohol content (BAC) and gives signal to the comparator IC. The outputof the comparator is connected to the arduino microcontroller. If the blood alcohol content is higher than the preset threshold value than the microcontroller give high pulse to the buzzer circuit and the buzzer is turn on to warn those sitting inside the vehicle. At the same time the relay is turned off hence the ignition of the car is deactivated (Praveen kumar et al, 2014). A 12V DC motor is use here to serve as a prototype of the vehicle. The logic is produced by the program written in Embedded C language. The software program is written, by using the MICROC environment. The program written is then converted in hex code after simulation and burned on to microcontroller using flash micro vision c.

1.2  PROBLEM STATEMENT

Drunken driving is considered as one of the major reason of accidents worldwide. Drivers under the influence of alcohol show a clear failure of perception, recognition and vehicle control. So by this accident occurs.

1.3.SIGNIFICANCEOF THE PROJECT

“Alcohol Detection System in Cars” provides an automatic safety system for cars and other vehicles as well.The sensors can also aid an officer in the detection of alcohol during a stop, not to replace other more reliable and effective testing methods. This equipment helps provide law enforcement with tools to develop initial suspicion of someone breaking the law. Because they lack the precision of other tests and can detect alcohol from sources other than the suspected impaired driver (J C Lerbeg et al, 1998). The significance of this project can by summarized as thus:

1. Reduced number of alcohol-related crashes.
2. Reduced number of injuries and fatalities caused by alcohol-related crashes.
3. Reduced damage to property from alcohol-related crashes.
4. Frequent accident caused by drunk driver which results human fatalities and material distraction.

1.4.  AIM AND OBJECTIVES OF THE PROJECT

1.4.1.  AIM

The aim of this work is to design andconstruct alcohol detectorand engine cutoff.

1.4.2.  OBJECTIVES of the project

The objectives of the project include the under listed:

1. To interface an alcohol Sensor with arduino to detect alcohol content in breath
2. To display the alcohol level of driver before driving using 16×2 LCD display
3. To stop the car engine and trigger an alarm if the alcohol level of a driver is high using relay and buzzer.

1.5 SCOPE AND limitation of the project

The Proposed System of microcontroller alcohol detection and engine cutoff will assure safety of lives and to prevent material distraction when installed with every vehicle by maintaining its real time operation. Alcohol detection are vital and of great importance from the perspective of passenger safety and traffic safety. Impact detection and notification is also one of the lifesaving and critical information provider system. This system is expected to detect blood alcohol content (BAC) of drivers in a particular vehicle which has the system installed in it and warn the occupants of the motor of how drunk the driver is and ultimately cutoff the ignition of the motor when the driver’s blood alcohol content exceeds the recommended threshold or coded value. This system can work in all kinds of automobile provided the sensor is place near the driver’s breath or the dashboard closed to the steering.Without undermining the significance of this project, it is important to mention that this work has some limitations in its real time operations. This limitation includes:

1. The ability of the MQ-3 alcohol sensor to sense wide range of gases such as Benzene, Hexane, Methane, Liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and carbon dioxide (CO₂) can seriously limit the result obtain from this device as it may be from source rather than the driver’s alcohol content as presumed.
2. The value obtains by the MQ-3 alcohol sensor only reflect approximate gas concentration in a permissible error range and does not represent the exact gas concentration. Hence the detection of precise alcohol content requires more precise and more costly instrument.
3. With the inability of arduino microcontroller to run more than one program at the same time, this system cannot detect accident or anything else aside blood alcohol content.
4. This proposed system does not use internet of thing (IoT), hence it results is not transfer to any authority server rather than warning the vehicle occupants.
5. This system does not have the ability to identify the location of the vehicle and cannot notify his/her relative due to lack of GPS and GSM modem.