AN AUTOMATED ENERGY BILL METERING SYSTEM BASED ON GSM TECHNOLOGY

The measurement of the energy consumed by residential and commercial buildings by utility provider is important in billing, control, and monitoring of the usage of energy. Traditional metering techniques used for the measurement of energy are not convenient and is prone to different forms of irregularities. These irregularities include meter failure, meter tampering, inaccuracies in billing due to human error, energy theft, and loss of revenue due to corruption, etc. This research study proposed the design and construction of a microcontroller-based electric energy metering system using the Global System for Mobile communication (GSM) network. This system provides a solution to the irregularities posed by the traditional metering technique by allowing the utility provider have access to remote monitoring capabilities, full control over consumer load, and remote power disconnection in the case of energy theft. Proteus simulation software was used to model the system hardware and the software was obtained by using embedded C programming and visual basic. It was observed that the system could remotely take accurate energy readings, provided full control over consumer loads and execute remote disconnection in case of energy theft. The system provides high performance and high accuracy in power monitoring and power management.   &nbsp

Development of Smart Plate Number Recognition System for Fast Cars with Web Application

Traffic law violation has been recognized as a major cause for road accidents in most parts of the world with majority occurring in developing countries. Even with the presence of rules and regulations stipulated against this, violators are still on the increase. This is due to the fact that the rules are not properly enforced by appropriate authorities in those parts of the world. Therefore, a system needs to be designed to assist law enforcement agencies to impose these rules to improve road safety and reduce road accidents. This work uses a Vehicle Plate Number Recognition (VNPR) system which is a real-time embedded system to automatically recognize license plate numbers. It provides an alternative means to VPNR using an open-source library known as openCV. The main aim of the system is to use image processing to identify vehicles violating traffic by their plate numbers. It consists of an IR sensor for detecting the vehicle. During testing, a minimum time was set for the sensor to detect the object which was recorded by the microprocessor. Once it was less than the set time, the camera was triggered to capture the plate number and store the image on the Raspberry Pi. The image captured is processed by the Raspberry Pi to extract the numbers on the image. The numbers on the capture imaged were viewed on a web page via an IP address. The system if implemented can be used to improve road safety and control traffic of emerging smart cities. It will also be used to apply appropriate sanctions for traffic law violators

Modeling and simulation of impedance-based algorithm on overhead power distribution network using matlab

Rapid location of faults in electrical distribution system is very critical for effective and efficient operation. The operation of the power system must be reliable and as economical as possible. The persistent lingering of fault conditions in the distribution networks is the lack of efficient technology to locate the faults in the distribution network and lack of proper maintenance of the equipment in the network. Most of the accidents caused to individuals (either the consumers or the workers) in this distribution networks are caused by some of these faults that not easily identified. This research proposes a model to locate faults in a distribution network using an enhanced impedance-based method for fault location. The model was simulated on the 2nd Avenue 11 kV feeder (Lagos) with the use of one-end impedance-based method. The results show a little marginal error when the location values obtained with the model are compared to doing physical inspection on the distribution line. The parameters that could affect the effectiveness of the method were analyzed

Android Malware Detection: A Survey

In the world today, smartphones are evolving every day and with this evolution, security becomes a big issue. Security is an important aspect of the human existence and in a world, with inadequate security, it becomes an issue for the safety of the smartphone users. One of the biggest security threats to smartphones is the issue of malware. The study carried out a survey on malware detection techniques towards identifying gaps, and to provide the basis for improving and effective measure for unknown android malware. The results showed that machine learning is a more promising approach with higher detection accuracy. Upcoming researchers should look into deep learning approach with the use of a large dataset in order to achieve a better accuracy

Switch leadership in projects: An empirical study reflecting the importance of transformational leadership on project success across twenty-eight nations

“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”Mahatma GandhiThis paper documents an empirical analysis of leadership in project management practices on 153 projects across 28 nations. This is a two-phase research study for which 46 projects were studied in phase 1 representing 14 nations and 107 projects were examined in phase 2 originating from25 nations. The main purpose of this research is to study the importance of project leadership and team related factors and enlist the factors that play a pivotal role inachieving project success. It is a multinational and thus multicultural research study that represents the presentday project environment, which is highly multicultural and multidisciplinary. The results from the analysis of dataobtained from phase 1 lead to the development of the phase 2 questionnaires that further explores the links between different leadership aspects and project success aspointed out in the phase 1. At the end the author provides a tentative and suggestive list of factors displaying theimpact of critical leadership factors on projectsucces