Development of a Cell Phone Based Vehicle Remote Control System using Solar Power

This paper presents the technical construction of a standalone vehicle controlled by GSM communication network. The designed GSM based solar powered vehicle could be operated from almost anywhere under GSM network which is powered by solar energy using 5 watt photo voltaic (PV) panel, stored in 3 similar 4V rechargeable batteries. The operation commences with a call generated from a cell phone which is auto received by another phone stalked in the vehicle motor driver. In the course of a call, if any of the buttons, 2, 4, 6 or 8, is pressed a tone corresponding to the button pressed is heard at the other end of the transmission which is called Dual Tone Multiple Frequency (DTMF) tone. The received tone in the cell phone at vehicle end is processed by a set of relays. These relayed signals are sent to the motor driver IC (L293D) which drives the motor forward, reverse, right or left. Most importantly as the car will be running by solar energy, so the vehicle can be sent to a long distance not worrying about the charge of the battery, since it accumulates the greater portion of the energy required from the external PV panel that absorbs and converts sunlight to generate the driving power, though there will be DC battery as a backup.