Date:13/05/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/05/13/stories/2007051304980300.htm

Karnataka - Bellary

Bellary engineering students design energy-efficient emergency lamp

Staff Correspondent

It switches on automatically depending on the external light

INVENTION: Prashant (second from left) along with his team explaining the salient features of the emergency lamp developed by them.

BELLARY: The efforts put in by the team of final year students of Electronics and Communication branch of Vijayanagar Engineering College Bellary, have yielded the desired results when its project exhibited at "Srishti — 2007," held at Basaveshwara Engineering College at Bagalkot bagged the first prize.

The team, comprising B.S. Prashant, along with Harikrishna,

C. Sharana Basava and P. Gururaj, had developed a rechargeable emergency lamp which is not only cost-effective but also ensures a long life despite being used continuously.

The salient features of their project was that they had used the light emitting diodes (LEDs) instead of the usual fluorescent bulbs, which provide bright light and consume very less power (four times less than the ones available in the market).

The speciality of the emergency lamp was that a light censor was installed with which the lamp switches on and off automatically depending on the external light.

"Care has been taken to ensure that the life span of the battery is increased by ensuring that charging stops once the battery reaches its optimum value to avoid wastage of power unnecessarily. A lamp, with low maintenance and minimum three years of battery life, costs Rs. 590," Prasant said and added that they were guided by Shameem Banu of the Electronics and Communication Department.

Students from about 60 colleges from all over the State had participated in the exhibition, which was organised jointly by the Visvesvaraya Technological University, Belgaum, Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishat (ABVP) and Basaveshwara Engineering College, Bagalkot.

Third prize

The students of Bellary Engineering College of Bellary have bagged the third prize for the project "DSP-based speaker recognition system" developed by Ritesh Kesari, Shahid and Raghu Praveen, at the exhibition.