TLD Instrumentation: A Case Study of PC Controlled TL Reader

Thermoluminescence reader is an important tool and a requisite for a researcher to study and characterize Thermoluminescence (TL) materials in different forms. Requirement for a versatile PC Controlled TL Reader has been felt for quite some time globally. Nucleonix Systems, Hyderabad, India, have developed a PC Controlled TL Reader by integrating complete electronics hardware circuits (comprising of Power Electronics, Low/High voltage Supplies, Temperature Controller, Micro Controller based data acquisition circuits having serial counter, ADC, DAC, EEPROM, PMT, PMT housing, sample heating system, drawer assembly, etc.) in a single enclosure. The system also integrated with software to calculate the activation energy (E), frequency factor (S) and order of kinetics ‘1’ for the prominent glow peaks using different equations.This Integral TL Reader unit gets connected to the Personal Computer System through serial port RS232C/USB port. The user interface to the system is through front–end VB software defined Graphics User Interface (GUI). The system also contains some of the software features like glow curve acquisition, analysis, filing, printing, plotting, overlapping, maker data reporting, etc. Additionally, system facilitates single/two/three plateau heating with variable heating rates.The primary objective of this development is to bring out versatile TL instrumentation system and also to make it affordable to many of the researchers in the Universities and other areas, including Radio-therapist, Medical Physicists in Cancer Hospitals. This system has been evaluated for its performance with CaSO4: Dy discs, powder, as well as with LiF: Mg, Ti chips. Linearity and reproducibility have been found to be quite satisfactory also within +2%. This system is quite useful to study the TL of phosphor, minerals and characterization of various solid semiconducting materials, and also can be used in personal dosimetry measurements and research studies in medical dosimetry, environmental radiation monitoring, and host of other applications in R&D Labs., etc.

Display Energy Management based on Eye Tracking

With the explosive use of personal computers or PCs, reducing computer energy consumption is paramount for sustainability. The display is the largest energy consumer in a personal computer. Current display energy management technologies ignore the attention of the PC user and therefore may either switch the display off when the user looks at the screen or lose energy by keeping the display on when nobody looks at it. This chapter discusses a new display energy management technology and outlines its implementation in a personal computer system. Unlike existing technologies, which “sense” a PC user through keyboard and/or mouse or the other sensors, this technology “watches” the user through a single camera or CMOS vision sensor. The technology tracks the user’s eyes, keeping display active only if the user looks at its screen. Otherwise, it dims the display down or even switches it off to save energy. The authors implemented the technology in software and hardware and present the results of their experimental evaluation.

Interfacing PMDC Motor to Data Port of Personal Computer

Procedures and techniques of hardware interfacing to personal computer system through parallel data port to control permanent magnet DC (PMDC) motor and create LabVIEW integrated-development-environments (IDEs) based Virtual Instrument (VI) software are discussed. To test the designed VI software diagram, authors constructed interface hardware without taking support of any commercially available DAQ boards. Hardware resource utilization and performance optimization by creating VI are discussed. Testing the design (Hardware and VI) by varying the set point speed of the motor is concluded. It is observed that the motor speed gradually approaches and locks to the desired or set speed.

Display Energy Management based on Eye Tracking

With the explosive use of personal computers or PCs, reducing computer energy consumption is paramount for sustainability. The display is the largest energy consumer in a personal computer. Current display energy management technologies ignore the attention of the PC user and therefore may either switch the display off when the user looks at the screen or lose energy by keeping the display on when nobody looks at it. This chapter discusses a new display energy management technology and outlines its implementation in a personal computer system. Unlike existing technologies, which “sense” a PC user through keyboard and/or mouse or the other sensors, this technology “watches” the user through a single camera or CMOS vision sensor. The technology tracks the user’s eyes, keeping display active only if the user looks at its screen. Otherwise, it dims the display down or even switches it off to save energy. The authors implemented the technology in software and hardware and present the results of their experimental evaluation.