CHAPTER ONE

Advertisement is a notice, or information telling people about a product, job or service. It can come in the form of sign post, billboards, postals, handbills etc. These forms of advertisement are not editable if any error is found. Reprinting is done to effect change on error found in the print media. This has led to the research and design of this project “Design and implementation of electronic billboard” to fix the gap of reprinting due to error.

Communication which can be defined as an observation of events, the analysis and interpretation of the observed information to the audience is divided into:

1. Digital Communication.
2. The Electronic Billboard is under Digital Communication that involves the use of Dot Matrix to display information.

• STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM.

There has been a constant quest by man since creation to improve on the quality of his life and existence, this ever increasing quest has been propelled by the simple need for man to address the problem posed by his challenging environment.

Some of the challenges associated with manual billboard include:

1. In manual billboard editing of information is very difficult once it has been designed and printed.
2. Reprinting of work is done to effect corrections on errors found.
3. It has no room for update, in case if new information needs to be added.
4. It attracts more cost in reprinting new document to correct errors.
5. It is not visible at night because of no illumination.

The primary objective of this project is to design and implement an electronic billboard that will ensure:

1. Edit of information that has been designed and displayed.
2. Elimination or reprinting of work to effect correction on errors found.

• Giving of room for update if any new information is needed.

1. Elimination of cost as a result of reprinting document for update or correction of error.
2. Visibility of information displayed on the billboard in the day and night.

The underlisted are some of significance of the study:

1. It enables the organization to reach the targeted audience due to its visibility.
2. The organization will be able to update new information on the electronic billboard.

The scope of study is to identify a better way of designing and implementing an electronic billboard that will totally reduce or eliminate the problems faced by manual billboard.

The study is narrowed down to information dissemination through the use of electronic billboard which is efficient to reach the targeted audience.

A number of factors militated against this project which poses some challenges:

1. Cost of getting information from relevant materials, journals, internet and respondents at the administrative area is exorbitant.
2. The stress of combining study and research work has not being easy on my own part.
3. Unwillingness of the respondent to release basic and necessary data.

For a clear understanding of the terminology, the following terms are hereby operationally defined.

1. LED (Light Emitting Diode) – It is a two-lead semiconductor light source which emits light when electric current passes through it.
2. Dot Matrix: A Dot matrix is a 2-dimensional patterned array, used to represent characters, symbols and images.
3. Billboards – Billboard is a large outdoor board for displaying advertisements or where notices are posted.
4. Microcontroller – Microcontroller is a system on a chip which contains one or more CPUs (processor) along with memory and programmable input/output peripherals.
5. Arduino – Arduino is an open-source electronic platform based on easy-to-use hardware and software.
6. Advertisement – A notice or announcement in a public medium promoting a product, service, or event or publicizing a job vacancy.
7. C Language – C language is a general purpose, imperative computer programming language supporting structured programming.
8. Computer – This is a device that works under the control of stored programs, automatically accepting, storing and processing of data to produce information.
9. Software – This is defined as that part of a computer system that consists of data or instructions that is used to direct the operation of a computer.
10. Electronics – This is the science of controlling electrical energy electrically, in which electrons have a basic role. It deals with electrical components such as vacuum tubes, transistors, diodes and integrated circuits.
11. Hardware – This is also referred to as system peripherals which are the physical components which constitutes a computer system.
12. Programming – This is a process that leads from an original formulation of a computing problem to executable computer programs.