Abstract: These days people love to travel around the world.
Regardless of their location and time, they especially Muslims still
need to perform their prayers. Normally for travelers, they need to
bring maps, compass and for Muslim, they even have to bring Qibla
pointer when they travel. It is slightly difficult to determine the Qibla
direction and to know the time for each prayer. As the technology
grows, many PDA equip with maps and GPS to locate their location.
In this paper we present a new electronic device called Mobile Qibla
and Prayer Time Finder to locate the Qibla direction and to
determine each prayer time based on the current user-s location using
PDA. This device use PIC microcontroller equipped with digital
compass where it will communicate with PDA using Bluetooth
technology and display the exact Qibla direction and prayer time
automatically at any place in the world. This device is reliable and
accurate in determining the Qibla direction and prayer time.
Abstract: This report shows the performance of composite
biodegradable film from chitosan, starch and sawdust fiber. The main
objectives of this research are to fabricate and characterize composite
biodegradable film in terms of morphology and physical properties.
The film was prepared by casting method. Sawdust fiber was used as
reinforcing agent and starch as polymer matrix in the casting
solution. The morphology of the film was characterized using atomic
force microscope (AFM). The result showed that the film has
smooth structure. Chemical composition of the film was investigated
using Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) where the result revealed
present of starch in the film. The thermal properties were
characterized using thermal gravimetric analyzer (TGA) and
differential scanning calorimetric (DSC) where the results showed
that the film has small difference in melting and degradation
temperature.