Homecamp April 09
Published on 26 Apr 2009 at 7:02 am.
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Another great day out with the homecampers, kindly hosted at Bash and organised and sponsored by various worthies including @yelllowpark (he of the t-shirt) and @monkchips.
An unconference but not really? Who cares - it worked.
My own take-aways (no particular order):
- Streaming via ustream - I think this is the right link
- Hooking up to projector - cable issues
- Reactiongrid - (incoming) sound issues
- Incoming presenter - (outgoing) sound issues
- Currentcost - some discussion with Martin about protocol/ handshake. He’s generously offered another piece of kit.
- Joe Begley house c/o http://www.greenenergyoptions.co.uk/ very cool solution and possibility of free trial
- Gave my little talk on what I’ve done so far and where I want to take it
- AMEE fairly focussed in what they do (watts) but could be hooked up via pachube
- Ask jamieandrews about leak detection
- Possible use of commercial flow meters for water (may be complications). Various products at Farnell. Despite suggestion nothing useful on Brita either.
- Pachube have atom format. Need to develop an app to get 4 traces on graph.Can fix my broken interface by adding min/max to EML.
- dopplr have something to help reduce travel energy costs (tripit too?)
- Onzo developing smart energy kit for later this year.
- Flukso have done some great stuff with their box (built inside a wifi router) and analysis software http://www.flukso.net/. Need correct URL for company.
- Need to look at http://oss.oetiker.ch/rrdtool/ data logging and graphing system for time series data.
- Checkout Arduino mega http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardMega
- Also look at alt microcontrollers that (will) run linux so we don’t have to develop and RT/OS and rewrite drivers for arduino.
- Useful input from @folknology on microcontrollers - check out his OHH and the ARM-based http://beagleboard.org/. (Later @ohh there was talk of creating an even better board.)
- Some work at Oxford on power signatures??
- Reactiongrid seems like a very useful alternative VE for education. Minimal talk on this.
- http://redcatco.com/ 6 factors in influencing outcomes
- Pity I missed Techcrunch’s Geeknrolla
- Need to discuss structure of homecamp wiki with @yellowpark. Should have separate registration so we get fewer trivial updates and have pages for each meeting plus resources and applications plus links to people profiles if poss. Can’t offer to do this yet but maybe later.
This is a draft. To be corrected.
Combined Gas and Electricity Monitor
Published on 28 Feb 2009 at 10:52 am.
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I have been working with a nice electricity device called CurrentCost to see if I could combine it with my gas monitor. This is proceeding but a little slowly because of some specification issues. Anyway, just as I thought I was getting there came a total distraction: the arrival of a new electricity meter from Landis + Gyr (see pic). This is not a “smart meter” as such but it’s a pretty useful device given that it has an LED indicator with a strong and clean pulse representing 1/1000 kWh. An LDR is easily taped over this indicator and fed into a microcontroller.
Excuse the scruffy taping job. I’ll think of a nicer way to hold it in place. A key feature is the opaque tape (not visible in pic) to maximise the contrast and therefore the input voltage swing.
This is now plugged into the same Arduino that’s watching my gas consumption and the software is modified appropriately. The device keeps track of the readings and sends updates periodically to the server over the Internet. The server can then, on demand, produce a record of what’s been consumed and how much we’ve spent. Once we build up a few months’ history our patterns of consumption should be clear so we can also see the broader trends and better refine our usage.
The use of power at night is a known problem since we (foolishly) allowed electric underfloor heating to be installed in part of our extension. At the moment we’re on a single tariff for electricity and this is costing about 9p/KWh. Iwill now do some more accurate sums to see if we should be on a dual tariff.
The other thoughts I’ve had all along with this project are to benchmark our consumption against those of comparable properties and also to invest in (even) more insulation and airtighting.
To facilitate that I need to finish the design (e.g. to add external temperature and re-calibrate the internal temp which is over-reading). Then I’ll see about building more robust prototypes for others to use. Let’s see what time allows. PS. Ext. temperature added (image replaced).
Online Forums (sic)
Published on 13 Feb 2009 at 12:16 pm.
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I think I’ve almost got used to the use of an English plural on a Latin word. Now where was I? Oh yes, Bulletin Boards, Discussion Boards or whatever.
In theory these should be major tools for collaborative organisations such as associations and charities, especially now that “Web 2.0″ is de rigeur for presidential campaigns. However, not that many associations are using Forums and some of those that are would admit that they function more as a broadcast medium than as an interactive tool.
There are many tools out there. I’ll only mention vBulletin and phpBB here but they are numerous as stand-alone tools and can also be found embedded within other tools such as Content Management Systems like Joomla! and Drupal.
If you are considering adopting one of these tools or even just evaluating them for a pilot project here are some of the considerations that may be relevant:
- Reliability - this is a combination of professional hosting and a great support community. The more popular offerings generally have the best support behind them. Volunteer support is often as good or better than its commercial counterpart. A combination of the two is ideal.
- Usability - this is of course very subjective so you will want to evaluate a few to see when you like.
- Functionality is becoming less important as most of the available tools will do the job. Many features such as the ability to adapt the look and feel are generally avaialable. Watch out for features such as topic threading and see mention of integration below.
- Look and feel/ branding - most of the available tools can be “skinned” with your logo, colours etc and there are plenty of off the shelf themes that you can at least use as a starting point. However, in order to properly match your branding you will usually need to have a custom skin produced. This need not be expensive.
- Security - assuming professional hosting your information will be safe. There are many ways to control access to individual parts of a forum. Good discipline on passwords is important unless you are using some more powerful method of authentication. A number of products have plugin authenticaion options.
- Integration - this could be a deciding factor as many of these products suffer from a lack of integration options. This means that you could need to replicate information about contacts and groups that are already held in other systems, creating a maintenance problem. In a project we are currently doing for a leading trade association we needed a single database to determine access control to their members’ website and associated forums. To minimise developmant and maintenance costs we chose a forum with a separable authentication system.
So. We haven’t gone as far as to recommend a specific tool because the best choice will depend on your existing installation. Hopefully the above will at least help you to make an appropriate choice. Should you need any help with that please let us know.
Meeting Schedulers
Published on 11 Feb 2009 at 3:13 pm.
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I’m not on many committees these days but I well remember the problem of scheduling meetings, whether face to face or by phone, video, IM or whatever.
Inside an organisation there are some obvious options such as provided within Outlook. However, it’s increasingly outside an organisation where the real challenge lies. It cannot be assumed that a single piece of infrastructure is shared by participants and, even if technically possible, there would be insurmountable security barriers.
So tools like Meetomatic and Agreeadate promise to fill an increasing need. There are several of these so one should also consider Timebridge, Timetomeet, Tungle, Jiffle, Doodle and probably others.
These are all web-based tools that operate outside your organisation. The key functions include sending invitations out and collating and presenting the responses so that you can pick the best date and time for a given meeting. Additional features such as updating your personal or corporate calendar are useful.
The main drawback of this approach relates to the time it takes to get responses back before the dates offered have been booked for something else. It would be useful if responses could be prioritised somehow, such as by setting your filters to mark these messages urgent. Each tool has it’s own take on this.
There’s also the question of which medium to use with some people having mobile email and others relying on SMS for urgent messages. This should be flexible if possible. (NB. Twitter decided it could not afford to use SMS in the UK; suppliers of free tools might take the same view.)
As with any new online system there will be a learning period. My colleague David reminds me that patience is required while people recognise how this kind of tool must be used if the expected benefits are to be realised..
Obviously these schedulers have a relationship to other group collaboration tools and this is where they could give us a very pleasant surprise by providing integration points. Say that you have a group set up for a given committee. At the moment it would typically be necessary to set up profiles for the members of this committee in each of several collaboration tools such as for document sharing, project management etc. When any contact detail changes you would need to visit all these systems to change your settings. Some software makers are beginning to respond by building tools that can share profile data. That will be welcome. Let’s hope!
CurrentCost Electricity Usage Monitor
Published on 11 Feb 2009 at 2:25 pm.
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Got the device yesterday. It seems very well put together and has a serial digital output (although I don’t yet have the cable for it). There’s a wiki at currentcost.wetpaint.com with information about this. Compared to the OWL, two other differences are immediately obvious. The OWL came with a handy bracket for wall mounting whereas CC has a sticky patch. Given that the wall in question is bare brick (in the meter cupboard) this is a nuisance - a managable one. Second and more serious the CurrentCost has runs on plug-in power not batteries. Both devices are otherwise wireless so you can measure from where any appliance is situated and flick the switch to see the power that device is consuming. However, that’s easier with a battery-operated unit. So I’m going to keep both units, one for its output and the other for its mobility. More on this when I get the serial data hooked up to monitoring central.
PS. That wiki has some confusing info on it. There have been various versions of the CC unit with different serial output specs. I have made a few comments there.
Expensive Sunday
Published on 9 Feb 2009 at 7:57 am.
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Family here yesterday so I had to let the bolier kick in around mid-day. Not such a cold day so the house reached target temperature quite quickly. Out in the evening (at James McMurtry gig) but it was chilly - could nevertheless have left it off for an hour or two. Need to add external temp measurement and find where all that heat is going!
Energy Monitoring Progress
Published on 30 Jan 2009 at 7:48 pm.
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Thanks to @phoebebright for reminding me to post an update. When I did version 1 of the gas meter it was crude to say the least. I was posting the pulses and handling everything on the server. Then I had fun with apparent bugs in the Ethernet Shield and lost interest for a week or two. On the plus side it at least allowed me to make some savings by fine-tuning the heating programmer.
Looking at Electricity and Temperature now. Got bored with trying to optically sense the meter’s rotating wheel (not enough contrast) so have ordered another meter which will hopefully have a pulse output. (This would have been a cheaper move if the beast I have was older.)
I have not ruled out using CurrentCost if I ever get one. However, a pulse output meter approach has quite a lot of advantages, not the least accurately predicting your energy bills. I have the Owl which is great for the popular game of “hunt the watt”. I also looked at a box for converting the Owl’s output - available but mega expensive.
I want to change the interface so I can use standard protocols to the server. The original problem was lack of accurate time on the Arduino. Once I bothered to read the ATMega spec I discovered the spare timers and then added the ISR code to generate a time trigger for transmissions to the server. Now it’s time to refactor everything.
I’ll need to do some code cramming to get everything into a standard Arduino’s memory space. It should be doable. Next report when I get my new meter, hopefully before the next homecamp.
OLPC makes the big bold move to open source
Published on 30 Jan 2009 at 10:09 am.
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Wonderful news that OLPC’s XO-2 is going to be open source hardware (crunchgear). This is a brilliant example of s*** happening, facing reality and adjusting course.
I’m not a critic of the project but it’s been a victim of success and the goalposts have completely moved. This change of course engages the maximum breadth of resources on the original mission - improving the lives of children. It will also create endless fun for those who want to innovate around the concept.
Gas Consumption Monitor
Published on 29 Dec 2008 at 1:58 pm.
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I got some time over the holiday period to carry out my threat to start monitoring our gas consumpition. The setup is an Arduino Duemilanove with ethernet shield. I used the standard software for the shield that comes with the IDE, trying it in both client and server modes. In the end I decided it should log the current “reading” every 5 pulses. The pulses come from a contact closure on the meter fed into one of the Arduino’s inputs. This needs some debouncing.
The nice thing about making it a client rather than a server was that I did not have to mess around with firewall settings. As a rule I don’t like any incoming access and this wasn’t necessary. Should our broadband connection fail for a while you don’t lose any data beacuse the current “reading” is always stored while the unit has power. (Must remember to add battery-level monitoring next time I change the software.)
No so fast: The power consumption of this setup is too high for practical running off batteries. If this was to be used in a volume situation we’d need to be able to turn off the Ethernet circuitry when not in use.
I did find some problems with the IDE on Windows. The serial port is not always available for downloading. Moving to a less-cluttered machine solved this. Also, when the Arduino is commected via USB and Ethernet it sometimes resets itself. I think this is due to noise or a ground-loop as the problem goes away when running off battery with the USB disconnected. Connecting to the meter does not seem to create a problem as its contacts are also isolated.
How best to present the resulting information? For now I calculate a moving average of the pulse rate, graph the resulting information with SVG and present it on a web page. For security reasons I am not posting the link to that but will add sample here in due course.
Next challenge: Electrical power. I know this is easy with “Current Cost” but I may look at alternatives too.
Post-script: Had some issues with Arduino’s Ethernet shield - now solved and documented on that forum. Looked at optically sensing the rotating wheel on my electricity meter but the marking is too subtle. I’m now getting a more up-to-date meter as my first choice solution. If not feasible, then Current Cost must be the best option despite its more approximate nature.
Arduino/ Ethernet and alternatives
Published on 5 Dec 2008 at 11:17 am.
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Had a look at a few options including PICAXE. Not a great deal to choose between them. Liking the philosophy behind Arduino I decided to bet on that as I only want to learn one platform. Initially found that the A. Ethernet Shield was not available in the UK. Ordered it directly from Italy.
In my travels, spoke to a very helpful guy at www.robosavvy.com - a site worth a visit, inter alia for robots playing soccer. It’s nice when people publish their phone numbers so you can speak to them instead of sending emails into the void.
Next step: get all the software and mount the learning curve.