Hardware Impplementation of GPRS En

nabled
Embedded Servver for Remote Access Terminal
T
Abhishek N. Tripathi

Utkarsh Sharma

Deepak Simaiya

Department of ECE

Department of IT

Department of CSE

BIST, Bhopal (M.P.)

LNCT, Bhopal (M.P.)

AbstractWireless Packet Data Networks, suuch as GPRS, hold

great promise for applications that rely on maachine to machine
(M2M) communication. The rapidly ad
dvancing mobile
communication technology and the decrease in costs make it
possible to incorporate mobile technology into home automation
systems. Based on an SMS/GPRS (Short Message
Service/General Packet Radio Service) mobile cell module and a
microcontroller, a home automation server can be established,
Powerful microcontrollers are used as parts oof most home and
office appliances of today. Integrating web servers to these
m over the Internet
intelligent devices will aid in controlling them
and also in creating effective user interfaces in
n the form of web
pages. This paper presents the development of A
AT modem driver,
text based command processing software, outtput for an Atmel
micro-controller to facilitate in sending and recceiving data via the
cell module. The proposed design is im
mplemented using
SMS(commonly known as text messages) and
d GPRS (Internet
based protocol) as the main communication prootocol .

TIT
T & Science, Bhopal (M.P)
II. ARCHITECTURE OF
O SERVER

The Remote Access terminal consistt of two modules, first one

is GSM modem mounted on Mikro
oElektronica SmartGM862
Board with GPRS and GPS capabillities [7] and ATmega-328
[8] controller having Transmission and reception capabilities
on serial port. The embedded controller (Atmega-328)
interfaced with GM862 Board to make
m
basic design of the
server. The data to and from the
t
embedded controller
platform, can be transmitted and recceived via GSM modem to
cellphone and vice versa. Basicallly, This Remote Access
Terminal communicates to a cell phone
p
which can support
JAVA application, developed on it, to access web pages
through GPRS [4].

KeywordsRemote access terminal (RAT), UAR

RT, AT Command,
AVR, GM862 Board, Modem.
I. INTRODUCTION

Remote control via the Internet is not a new

w feature and used
in home automation systems [1, 4]. Howeever, providing a
mechanism for interaction between ddevices in this
environment is quite challenging. The Innternet has been
mostly used to connect personal computers sso far, but shortly
all kinds of appliances with embedded computers will
massive number of
exchange information over the Internet. A m
microcontrollers are available in todays deviices which can be
linked to the Internet. If these intelligent apppliances could be
connected to the Internet at low cost, the waay we control and
manage their functions would change entirely. An embedded
web server [2, 4] should use the HTTP prootocol to transmit
Web pages from the embedded system to the web browser and
to transmit form data back to the embedded ssystem attached to
the appliance. The embedded system reqquires a network
interface, such as Ethernet, a TCP/IP protocol stack,
embedded web server software and static aand dynamic web
pages that form the user interface for that specific device.
To make communication AVR microcoontroller board is
used. It can talk over a wide range of nettworks- Ethernet,
Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, XBEE and GPRS. This paper is deploying
GM862 module interface with AVR, havingg GPRS and GPS
capabilities [6], both accessible with AT Coommands [7] and
can act as a CPU to communicate between weeb servers.

978-1-4673-5999-3/13/$31.00 2013 IEEE

Fig. 1 The Architecture of the Prototype.

III.

SYSTEM DE
ESIGN

A. Power Control
Power control between these mod
dules is very crucial thing
because GM862 Board [7] and Atmega-328
A
controller [6]
works on different voltage level. In order to communicate
these modules, we need to control the
t power on input logical
pins of GM862 Board through the lo
ogical pins of Atmega-328
controller. The logical pins of the GM862 can accept only
CMOS 2.8 Volt. For that reason, wee will use a voltage divider
in the Tx line from Atmega-328 co
ontroller to GM862 Board.

Both, Rx and Tx lines should be pulled up tto the PWR_CTL

line of the module because these pins dontt have an internal
pull up resistor. The GM862 Board is powerred by a LiPo cell
(3.7 V with 2000 mAh) and AVR board iss powered by the
USB port but it is resolved by using pulled upp resistor.

A. AT Command
The AT is an ATTENTION commaand and is used as a prefix
to other parameters in a string. The AT
A command combined

B. Hardware Connections
We provided connection between ATm
mega-328 [6] to
GM862 Board [7]. so ATmega-328 can com
mmunicate through
the modem (Telit) mounted on GM862 Booard. For this, we
just need simple four connections betweeen these modules
shown in fig 3 and Table I.
TABLE I
CONNECTION BETWEEN ATMEGA-328 TO GM
M862 BOARD
Serial No.

ATmega-328

Tx

G
GM862
TXD

Rx

RXD

POWER_5v

Vcc

POWER_GND

GND

The UART input line TXD (rx_uart) of the GM862 Board is

not internally pulled up with a resistor. So, aan external 47K
pull-up resistor is required. If this internally ppull-up register is
not used, then transmission is possible but a problem arises in
modem [7].
the reception of data on the controller from m

Fig. 3 A Snapshot of installlation System.

with other parameters can be set up

u in the communications
package or typed in manually as a command line instruction
through HyperTerminal.
B. GPRS
Using GPRS as the main commu
unication protocol for the
server would improve the system, as it would become more
accessible to other devices and prottocols via the internet and
also it would allow more affordablle data transfer within the
cellular system.
V.

IMPLEMENTED FE
EATURES

By using Software serial library con

nnection [8] is established
and following features are implemen
nted:
Starting and stopping the module.
m
Initialisation.
Sending/Receiving of SMS.
Opening a socket, writing and reading (used to talk
HTTP) over GPRS.
After Parsing of AT commands, log
g, that recorded within the
IDE.

Fig. 2 Connections between ATmega-328 annd GM862.

IV. TECHNIQUES USED

The GSM modem (Telit) needs to be sett-up to send and

receive SMS messages, this is done by sending the AT
commands. It will communicate to any cell phhone on a cellular
network through GPRS.

GM862 monitor
switching on
done
initializing modem ...
AT
->ok
AT+IPR=9600

sending SMS ...

AT+CMGF=1

->ok
AT+CMGS="6245"
->not ok: AT+CMGS="6245"
hello
done
initializing GPRS ...
AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","internet","0.0.0.0",0,
0
->buf:
+CMGS: 35
OK
AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","internet","0.0.0.0",0,
0
OK
AT#USERID=""
->buf: AT#USERID=""
OK

leads to a breakthrough in the way we interact with our homes.

Therefore, users can control and manage the intelligent
appliances using a GPRS network over the internet. If we use
SMS or GPRS services for controlling the intelligent devices
we just need to pay per use. The overall cost for data services
on GSM as compared to other network such as Ethernet will
be reduced by a great amount.
The operation of embedded server is controlled by the data
coming from clients. The adaptability of the embedded server
is enhanced by making it possible to accept request from a
number of clients having diverse working platforms.
REFERENCES
[1]

[2]
[3]

AT#PASSW=""
->buf: AT#PASSW=""
OK
done
switching GPRS on ...
AT#GPRS=1
->buf: AT#GPRS=1
+IP: 10.37.146.251
OK
Done
After uploading the web page, It is used to command the
intelligent devices through ATmega-328.

Fig. 4 Sending and Receiving of Message: on Serial monitor.

VI.

CONCLUSION

A system for remote access terminal using GPRS enabled

embedded server is designed in this paper. Using cellular
services such as SMS and GPRS to control remote devices

[4]

[5]
[6]
[7]
[8]

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AVR Tutorials: http://www.extremeelectronics.co.in/avr-tutorials.
GM862 Datasheet and AT Command Tutorial: http://www.telit.com.
Arduino Docs: http://arduino.cc/en/Guide/HomePage