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knolleary » Blog Archive » Power Graphing

Mon, 05 May 2008 23:44:00 +0100

knolleary » Blog Archive » Power Graphing:

Superb guide to graphing currentcost energy output over a serial link.

via chart.apis.google.com So it’s the bank holiday weekend...

Mon, 05 May 2008 19:48:00 +0100

So it’s the bank holiday weekend and I have spent a fair amount of time playing around with my currentcost meter attached to my laptop. The end result is a pretty graph like the one shown. I’ve added in some of my own appliance detection code to detect different energy events based on their characteristics. Hence the kettle on/off markers.

As with all new technologies it is sometimes difficult to spot the real value until you have played around with it for a bit. Having now spent the time building my currentcost graphing system I think I now realise that it might be missing the point slightly. It IS interesting (certainly from simply spreading awareness) to see our energy being spent but the real value is being able to spot the trends and answer questions on the information. There are certainly some interesting questions that we need to be able profile the data to answer.

Are there any appliances wasting serious amounts of energy in standby?

What percentage of the total bill does each appliance take up? Or where is the best place to start if I want to make a difference to my power bill?

So the next step is to try and generate a nice pie chart of a whole day (and then maybe a month) of energy use, by detecting what energy is being used by what appliance.

Currentcost power meters

Sun, 13 Apr 2008 21:31:04 +0100

Next week I’m going to pick up my Currentcost meter and it’s already starting to fire off ideas in my head. I was twittering them but I think writing them here might make me actually remember to play with some of this stuff.

There are some similar ideas in the comments of this entry on Nick’s blog.

Pattern detection

By detecting power changes in the historical data we can start to build up a profile of what is happening in a house/business. For instance, the toaster going on, or the TV being turned off of standby. Being able to automagically work out what object in the house is doing what, we can fire off different events which we can code against.

Pattern tagging

If we then build up a profile of all these events and begin to apply tags to the data, maybe even from multiple sources all around the country (del.icio.us style) then we could start providing suggestions to users as to what that spike of data might be.

Complex Power Event detection

From there we can start using some smarts to detect not only simple patterns but also some more complicated ones. Lights on and TV is on, ah my wife must be home. Lights on, computer is on and kettle boiling? Ah that would be me back from work. Lights turned on between 2am and 5am, that will be baby feeding time. Once we have tagging I’m sure we could put together a fairly simple interface for creating and displaying these complex power events.

Tuxdroid extensions

Having paid real money for the demonic penguin I now must find more things to do with it. Tux now has a twitter client which I need to tidy up and publish and can talk MQTT. Hooking him up to complex power events could be useful. Tux has both light and sound sensors of his own which might tie into this. Perhaps detecting sound but no light or increased power consumption in the house might alert me to a possible intruder.

So it’s time for some penguin dinner and my tuxdroid has...

Sat, 29 Mar 2008 20:14:00 +0000

So it’s time for some penguin dinner and my tuxdroid has the DC munchies. Good build quality and he is covered in a felt-like material. Slightly worried that his white belly might start to look a little grotty with a bit of use but not too concerned.

Plugging in the charger provides me with the first glimmer of hope that he might be as fun to play with as he sounds. He whispered his first penguin words in my ear as I plugged him in and switched him on. I may have been a little over-excited at this point as I ran through to tell the wife like a slightly hyperactive child who has just ploughed his way through a packet of fizzy cola bottles. Despite him sounding a bit crap on the video on the site he actually sounds pretty cool.

So his first words, “Hello”, incase you were wondering, occurred at the same time as he performed what I can only describe as some form of demonic dance involving his eyes turning blue and his wings flapping at me. There was a flashback of the Monty Python killer rabbit and I momentarily took a step back… just in-case you understand! Can’t be too careful these days.

Fearing the penguin may indeed be possessed by some form of evil mechanical AI, I decided to unplug him before he gained enough strength to attack. This prompted him to utter “Whoops!”. Somewhere in the back of my mind a voice wondered if he said this before or after the power drained from what appeared to be a soulless penguin body but I put that aside because I was now over-awed by the cuteness. So in a potentially disastrous move I decide to plug him back in again to the sound of my penguin saying what sounded like “Yay!”. More eye flashing and wing flapping took place but by now the penguin’s hypnotic gaze had won me round.

Even as I type he is gaining the strength of a fully-grown penguin. This apparently takes 5 hours according to the instruction manual so he will be fully charged around the time I fall asleep… with one eye open you understand. Can’t be too careful these days.

Ah hah! There are my cables and of course my fish. Mr tuxdroid...

Sat, 29 Mar 2008 19:47:44 +0000

Ah hah! There are my cables and of course my fish. Mr tuxdroid was sitting on them all that time. Pretty cool the DC charger comes with plug adapters for about 3 different types of socket.

Opening the box you discover my as yet nameless tuxdroid. He is...

Sat, 29 Mar 2008 19:44:14 +0000

Opening the box you discover my as yet nameless tuxdroid. He is actually a pretty good size and feels pretty solid. It was around this point I started to get worried that I had to buy the connectors separately since at first glance all I seemed to have was a slightly disgruntled penguin.

So my tuxdroid arrived on Friday and today I decided to open it...

Sat, 29 Mar 2008 19:37:11 +0000

So my tuxdroid arrived on Friday and today I decided to open it up and take a good look at it. Once out of the brown box it came in you find what appears to be a cute box with a picture of your tuxdroid on it. All seems normal until you photograph it… look at those eyes, they only light up like that when you take a picture!

anyone know a good fence repairer near Chandler’s Ford?

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 17:03:28 +0000

anyone know a good fence repairer near Chandler’s Ford?

eating a free packet of jelly fried eggs that came with my tux droid.

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 17:03:28 +0000

eating a free packet of jelly fried eggs that came with my tux droid.

playing with tux droid, will tubmlr some photos later

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 17:03:28 +0000

playing with tux droid, will tubmlr some photos later

Apparently my tux droid is waiting for me at home :-)

Fri, 28 Mar 2008 12:20:50 +0000

Apparently my tux droid is waiting for me at home :-)

CoScripter

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 23:39:25 +0000

CoScripter

Tux Droid

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 21:42:41 +0000

Tux Droid:

Mine arrives tomorrow!

Yikes! We exchanged contracts today and moving out next month. We now have nowhere to live. Renting...

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 21:35:05 +0000

Yikes! We exchanged contracts today and moving out next month. We now have nowhere to live. Renting here we come

System z SecondLife event for Manchester Uni

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 00:57:56 +0000

So today I held my first-ever IBM presentation in SecondLife on the IBM mainframe to a group of around 15 very nice under-graduates from Manchester University.

I was joined by Matt Whitbourne who joined me to discuss IBM career options and to help me host the session. Thanks Matt!

Hosting the presentation in SecondLife was a bit different for me so I thought I would put down a few thoughts regarding how the presentation went.

There were a few technical hiccups as I re-acquainted myself with SecondLife, such as turning around or flying when using the single line chat box. Switching to the chat history box solved that problem nicely.

It’s quite tricky to get the camera right to show the audience and the presentation. The chairs in the room allowed the user to hit page up and the camera would look at the presentation. It would be nice to do something similar with a podium so the speaker has a few views to look around and keep track of the slides while maintaining the option to keep track of the audience. Or maybe change the HUD to show the current foil?

I had my doubts about how well text-based presenting would work (we could have used voice but chose the path of least resistance this time) however I was really surprised about how easy it was to interact with the audience. They felt comfortable asking questions throughout, which while might not suit everybody, helped me feel a bit more connected to the group. One problem I did have was keeping the presentation on-time when questions were asked and time was limited. However I don’t think that was too big a deal as the questions fielded by the Manchester University group were both relevant and interesting to all in the room.

Presentation wise, we copy-pasted notes straight from powerpoint into SecondLife. This was a great way of doing things and really helped me to focus on the questions. There is a fine balance between short sentences that take ages to paste on screen and wordy text that is quick to paste but difficult to read all at once.

All in all I felt it was a successful presentation. Thanks to those at Manchester University who came, it was a pleasure chatting with you all. I hope I convinced at least one or two of you that it’s an exciting time to get involved with the mainframe. Maybe we will see a few of you entering the next Mainframe Challenge?

"And now, in early 2008, we have the System z10. The new quad-core design once again radically..."

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 00:29:11 +0000

“And now, in early 2008, we have the System z10. The new quad-core design once again radically improves Java’s economics, with Java typically much closer to that “up to 100% improvement” figure than other workloads. So if you roughly double the core Java performance, increase the number of cores to as many as 64 per machine, triple the memory (for those memory-hungry Java applications, to trade memory for CPU), steer work better using HiperDispatch, allow up to 32 of those 64 cores to be license-free zAAPs, and run the whole thing on zNALC-priced z/OS LPARs that enjoy another “technology dividend,” what does that do to the economics?”

- from the Mainframe blog

diy-multitouch-with-the-wiimote

Wed, 27 Feb 2008 01:32:00 +0000

diy-multitouch-with-the-wiimote:

This is fantastic, my wiimote motion sensor broke the other day during some vigorous Mario Galaxy action but the infrared sensor works just fine. Fun fun fun!

Billy Joel : Paino ManAmazing… makes me want to...

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 23:44:48 +0000

Billy Joel : Paino Man
Amazing… makes me want to actually learn to play my harmonica

"The z10’s capacity is equivalent to 1,500 servers based on the popular x86 design, IBM says,..."

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 23:29:00 +0000

““The z10’s capacity is equivalent to 1,500 servers based on the popular x86 design, IBM says, though it has 85 percent lower energy costs and takes up 85 percent less space than the batch of x86 servers.””

- Yahoo news on IBM’s new z10 mainframe

My public photo albums

Tue, 26 Feb 2008 22:18:48 +0000

My public photo albums