Automatic Control of Fuel Stations in Sudan

Abstract

The system currently used to manage the fuel stations in Sudan is a traditional system where manually paying the cost of the fuel and manually monitoring fuel level within the station tank, which makes the service slow, unreliable, need additional time, large number of workers and it is also expensive for the company that owned the stations. This research design an automated system to control the fuel sale and remote monitoring of the fuel level in the station tank which makes the work more accurate compared with manual work ,reduce workers inside the station , provide better service to customer , avoid all the human errors and also avoid the cheating activities . Remote monitoring technology can thus be applied to this process to provide timely information such as fuel level in station tank to enable timely decision making based on accurate data. An electronic system has been designed for fuel stations using Arduino microcontrollers and the wireless technology. In Fuel sale Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) are created to interact with customers using visual Basic which enables them to enter the data (ATM Number, Fuel Cost). If the customer’s data is valid, customer’s request transmitted by wireless X-Bee to a microcontroller to give the order to the fuel counter chosen by the customer to start the work for refueling his /hers vehicle. This reduce manpower, save time, provides reliable and faster services. In monitoring fuel level Arduino Uno gets the fuel levels which are measured from the ultrasonic sensor, and then sends this fuel levels via wireless XBee to Graphical User Interfaces to display real time Fuel Levels values. This makes fuel station management easier, faster, high accuracy, real-time monitoring and provides information about the current status of the station, which helps to take decisions in a suitable time.