Simulation Brainstorm

In addition to testing the code that we currently have. I am investigating the possible ways of improving the simulation of the power usage in a dorm. Currently we only have weekday vs. weekend and time of day as variables in generating a power usage value. Some other information that I could incorporate to make the data more realistic are:

- day of week (Sunday, Monday, etc.)
- day of year (holidays)
- temperature (use more air conditioning when it is hot)
- energy literacy
- number of students in floor/dorm
- individual floors
- multiple dorms

So far the ones that jump out to me as being useful to put into a simulation would be the day of week, day of year, and temperature. Hopefully adding these extra variables will allow us to test the our sensors and meters will very realistic data.

Code Cleanup

Since the milestone, we have had a lot of cleanup that we needed to do with our code. This included fixing things with checkstyle, pmd, and findbugs. Our code was not undergoing these checks until very late in the milestone so we haven't been keeping up with getting our code up to the level that it should be at. Now our code is much more readable and follows all the conventions. Being that our code is on Google Project Hosting, I feel much better about the code that is being presented to the public.

I have also implemented some tests for the simulation java files. We didn't have any testing before and I will continue to add more tests as we continue development. We ran into some bugs that took us a while to figure out. At that time testing was not implemented. Had some tests been written, it would have saved us a lot of time in making sure our code was doing what it was supposed to.

Dorm Energy Simulation Milestone

This week marks the end of the milestone for the Dorm Simulation Group. Joining a group already in progress has presented some difficulties. Alan and Edwin have already been working on this project for the entire semester so they had a good understanding of the system. Being that the interaction between all of the different parts between the meters and sensors and WattDepot is complicated, it took me a few times to actually figure out how all of the pieces fit together.

Working together to create this system has been just as complicated. We separated out the parts with Alan working on the meter simulation, Alan working on the sensors, and me and Bao working on the dorm simulation. The way we were working was we each worked on our own parts and then put them together. We ran into many issues with data types and multiple conversions required to make them work with the requirements of the libraries we were using. It didn't help that we only integrated svn in the final week of the project. This resulted in many checkstyle and pmd errors which needed to be fixed at the end.



The postponing of all of these essential software engineering practices has made it much more work in the last week of the project. It has been clear as to why these sytems should be in place in the very beginning and the benefits of doing so have become painfully clear while working on this project.

Effective Dorm Power Simulation Ideas

The idea of creating an effective simulation for power readings for an entire dorm is both interesting and a challenge. When this project was described it was something that I knew that I could become interested in. I began brainstorming ways in which a realistic simulation could be designed.

The obvious way was to create a large array which stored different data points based off of some research. This was is obviously undesirable since it is much less useful for testing. The next easiest way would be to get random variables between a pair of limits. This is actually being used right now for basic testing, but this still isn't a realistic simulation of a dorm's power usage.

The way that we have decided to go with is to store data of a average day for each day of the week, since the energy use can vary greatly depending on the day. Next, we would have a skew value, probably are 10%, which would be used to get a random value between the end points. This way seems to be a way which could produce realistic data which could be used to dependably test other code. After this is implemented, we will be able to tell if my hopes hold true and if we need to make adjustments to the algorithm.

Dorm Energy Simulator: Week 2

In order for a simulation for a dorm's power usage to be realistic, it is important to have a clear idea of what types of appliances a typical dorm room would have and the power that these devices use under different uses. The best way to create a realistic spreadsheet of usage data would be to find the periods where students are in their dorms and using the most energy. Then we could simulate "turning on" and "turning off" different devices which would give us data that would resemble what real power usage in a dorm would be like. Incorporating this knowledge with a realistic algorithm for energy use during different times of the day and different days of the week will give us good data which can be very useful to see if different projects are working correctly with reasonable information.

This is a wiki page which contains a chart of different devices and their power usage in standby, average load, max load, and when turned off. This page will be updated with new appliances and more data as it becomes available.



The wiki page can be reached by clicking here.

Dorm Energy Simulator: Week 1

This is the first week in the 3rd milestone. I am now working in the team which will create a program to simulate data for energy usage in the dorms. The simulation will be able to produce data depending which devices are used by the residents at different times during the day.

One very important thing that we needed to get cleared out of the way was the terms that we would need to use during our development of this project. These terms include power (the present flow of watts), energy (power over time), and demand (average rate of energy use over time). This is very important as we proceed so that we have a consistent understanding and implementation throughout our program.

We have not met yet to discuss how we will break up the work, but I will be doing research into the devices that would typically be found in a dorm room and finding the energy use while they are on/off. I will also be looking into their current program which sends data.

Kukui Cup Competition Design: Milestone 2

For this second milestone, we change our method to focusing on a different time period each week. This allowed us to place our minds in a certain mindset so we could make choices in our design that would more closely match those of the users. We used the first week to do the mockups for the period before the competition, the second week for the period right after the competition started, the third week for billboard pages, and the last week to fix up our older mockups and give them a consistent look.

This week i changed up my previous mockups to make them look consistent with the other pages for the site. I also created the wiki for all of the billboard mockups.



This is the basic help page with competition information and contact info.



This is the billboard page before the competition begins. It gives what a student would probably like to know about the competition like the prizes and how the winners are determined.




These are a couple pages which will be displayed when the competition is going on. The idea is to give the students quick and easy ways for them to improve their energy usage.

Kukui Cup Competition Design: Week 7

This week, I focused on creating mockups for the billboard. The billboard will be scrolling through different pages at an interval somewhere between 5 and 10 seconds. They will show some interesting information to the students and give them updates on the competition. The first five mockups I created just gave some helpful information to the students which could help them reduce their energy usage. The one after that shows the prizes they can win, which is probably the biggest motivator for the students. The last page I created shows the current energy percentage savings in the dorm along with a dollar equivalent so they can more easily relate to the numbers.

Kukui Cup Competition Design: Week 6

For this week, we made mockups for the time when the competition has just started. Judging from what we had done the past week, I think that it is very helpful to focus on one time period at a time. It easy easy for us to concentrate on the needs that the student's have based on the time. This week we continued working on the pages that we have worked on in the past. For me, that would be the billboard page and the help page.



The help page didn't change very much. I just added a little more information that should have been in the previous page.



This is one of the screens of the billboard page. It is a basic page which would include much of the information that a student would like to know at a glance. It has the current date at the top of the page. On thee right there are tips so that they improve their scores. In the middle there is a slideshow and the current rankings, which is probably the most important information to the students. On the right are upcoming events which the students may be interested in going to earn Kukui Nuts.

Kukui Cup Competition Design: Week 5

After the first milestone, we are taking a different approach to creating the mockups for the website. We will now be focusing on a different time period on the competition time line each week. We will create the pages with the appropriate content for each time period. This method will allow us to focus on a certain time period so we stay in the same mindset as we design each page for the time. It will help us to be more consistent and focus on exactly what should and shouldn't be on each of the pages. we will utilize our 2nd meetings each week to collaborate on our pages and make the necessary changes.

I made the mockups for the billboard page and the help page.



The billboard page is a page that is displayed on a large screen somewhere where there is a lot of foot traffic. People would be able to track the competition without needing to log in to the site. It will show relevant information depending on the time of the competition.



The help page just displays more information about the site and the Kukui Cup Competion.


View the wiki page with more information of the pages here.

Kukui Cup Competition Design: Milestone 1

This is the first milestone of the Kukui Cup Competition Design team. These past four weeks have definitely been a learning experience and being on the design team has enlightened me as to what the task entails. The most difficult thing that me and my team have had to adjust to was not having set tasks in order to meet an objective. There are many ways to reach the goals that are provided and it is up to us to stay on track to meet them. Now that the milestone is here, we are able to show a finished mockup of what we believe the site should look like after careful decisions were made about each portion of the site.

During the meeting on Friday, we really hashed out every aspect of the site and what needed to be there and what didn't need to be there. We decided to go with the single site design instead of the double site design in order to simplify for the milestone. We were able to cut down the number of pages and the number of modules on each page. For example, instead of having a page where the user can quickly see the current data on a login page, we decided it would be more useful and even quicker to have that same data on the home page. That way, we cut out the "logged out" page and made the experience much better for the user.

Much of my time this week was used to clean up the mockups that I have made previously and to create new ones to replace them. For the previous ones, I changed them to add actual content to make them look much closer to what they would look like if they were actually implemented. This was much more useful than I could have thought because actually seeing the site fleshed out like that actually helped me see what was effective and what was not in the pages. While it is quick to physically make the mockups, it is much harder to make the decisions that go into making a mockup. Many times, I would have to go back and forth on a feature or try different things when moving things around to make them aesthetically pleasing.

The two pages:




merged into one:


For the next milestone, much of the work comes in exploring other options. The first task we have is to refine what we have. We have done a lot of work trying to make the site as good as we can, but there are undoubtedly things that will come up as other teams try to implement the site. These may be things like aesthetics, but could also be things such as a module just not making sense to be in there. Since we have worked on the design for a while, there may be things that we may have set our minds to that may not actually be the best implementation. Outside of modifying what we already have, we may pursue the idea of having the two site design. If we could really flesh that out we could easily see what the major differences are between the two methodologies and may even decide to switch designs. Outside of the design aspect, we need to create more content for the site. This would include things like adding more activities, commitments, and goals, and also creating content of our own that would aid in increasing energy literacy. These could be in the form of videos, tips to succeed in the competition, and creating quizzes for the students.

The wiki of our milestone 1 can be found: here.

Kukui Cup Competition Design: Week III

In this third week of the project, I began creating mock-ups of the website. Me and Wing came up with a prototype design of a home page which would have a competition module that could be swapped in a out depending on whether there was a Kukui Cup being held. We used Balsamiq to do this create the mock-up. I also went with the old paper and pencil in my notebook to do a few more designs of this idea of a competition module. The drawings can be seen below. I apologize for the quality of the scans. Hopefully, I will be able to make them more clear later.








After that design, I moved onto another design which would have the competition module always be available, but its content would change depending on if it was before, during, or after the competition. These mock-ups were done in Balsamiq. This wiki page includes all of my mock-ups and an explanation of each page. Click here

During our meeting on Friday, we discussed activities which students could do to earn Kukui Nuts, different visualizations of the data, and questions that needed to be asked during the focus groups with the RAs.

For the next week and the milestone, we hope to choose one of the two designs proposed in this blog entry or another design which separates the main page and the Kukui Cup page. From there, we will be able to create a more polished and finalized version of the site for the first milestone.

Kukui Cup Competition Design: Week II

For this second week of the design planning, we were able to meet together where we were able to brainstorm and discuss many issues. Some of the things that were were able to talk about were: which dorms would be the best suited for a dorm energy competition (Frear vs. Freshmen dorms), features of the site, different metrics for research and competition purposes, and overall design of the competition. This was very productive and I think that we were able to make important decisions which will help us to progress through the design phase.

I went through each of the websites of other school's dorm energy competition. After going through each of the pages, I realize that the goals for our website will put itself much farther than any other dorm energy competition website out there. The vast majority of sites that exist now don't have real time data, are static, give very few updates as to the progress of the competition, and don't allow for social interaction between students. They did however have events and tips for the students to increase their energy literacy.

For next week, we will create our first mockups and go through the actual design of the website and the features that should/shouldn't be included. We will incorporate what we learned by looking at the other websites to design a site which will hopefully result in the most effective was to make our dorm energy competition as successful as it can be.

Kukui Cup Competition Design

In my ICS 414 course, as a class we will be implementing a site for the upcoming dorm energy competition in the Fall semester this year. For the first few weeks of this semester, myself along with John, Kelli, Scott, Wing, and Shanah, will be working together to design the overall competition and create a mockup version of the site using Balsamic, a tool used to create mockups of websites.
We began with creating a list of tasks that we would need to complete in order to meets the goals of the project. We all looked resources which would help us to decide which tasks would be important when we are trying to make the competition as effective as it can be to reducing energy usage. This is a list of tasks that I thought would be necessary to achieve the goals of our subproject.

- continue research to so that we can figure out what is the most effective ways to get students to reduce their energy use
- look at what methods are the most effective for educating the students about energy conservation
- find the best ways to provide energy data to the students which would be meaningful to them and help them to see the results of their changes
- make a list of rules for the competition
- create a point system or another system which would be the basis of the competition
- design a system where students can make pledges to make certain
- create a list of incentives which would encourage the students
- research into extending the system into other sites/social networks such as Twitter and Facebook
- create mockups of the site, using Balsamic, which would include all the features necessary to make it successful
- research what should be in the site through research and looking at other school's programs

Link to page with resources.