Development of a GSM Enabled Real-Time Electronic Display Board

The development of an electronic display board that utilizes global system for mobile communications (GSM) functionalities is presented in this paper. The aim of this research was to overcome the challenges associated with the currently deployed display notice boards systems. These challenges include the enormous man power and time required to change the notice on a manual notice board and the required tedious reprogramming to change the notice on a programmable notice board. This research utilized the combined advantages of GSM and embedded system technology to eliminate these challenges. The control unit is developed with an ATMEGA328P microcontroller to control the transmission and reception of messages from the Mobile phone to a GSM900 modem. The STM32F103 microcontroller controls the display and scrolling of the messages on a P10 light-emitting diode (LED) matrix display board unit. Also, a set of instruction codes written in the object-oriented C language, programmed onto the microcontrollers provided all required functionalities of the wireless control and display of notices. Results obtained showed that information in the form of text messages can be sent from a mobile phone for display on the electronic display notice board.