Software Engineering returns with full force. Excitement, Achievement, and Challenge awaits us as we dive into another semester of class and a semester long project of high hopes and expectations. This time we are working on taking the same concepts we ended Software Engineering I with (the integration of WattDepot) and moving beyond it to a complete project we can use to start an Energy Conservation Challenge for the University of Hawaii dormitories. It doesn’t come as a surprise that with a goal set so big and so encompassing that our class has to come out of the gate with plans and division already in mind.
My current project has come to be the creation/enhancement of the WattDepot system to include visualization, browser, and monitor. These aspects are characterization of the need to display the information of WattDepot in a more user friendly formation, giving the user easy graphics, a simple user interface, and update data respectively. With me on this task is Edward Meyer, and Bao Huy Ung, two of my friends, fellow former 413 students, and partial programmers of Greenometer, a WattDepot creation akin to the Eco-Depot I had worked on previously (as seen in older post here). With the assistance of Robert Brewer, the lead worker on the WattDepot project our goal is to begin setting up these systems as a standalone project which can then be modified and converted to work with other projects the rest of the class is doing (for example a group is making their own visualization specifically for WattDepot which should be easy to shift to after we program for use of Google visualization).
We started out with a simple understanding of the project: take WattDepot and add to it things which regular people can use. Upon meeting with Robert Brewer formally and discussing the project and the tasks we had we had determined the 4 parts that we should consider for this phase of class. We need to set up a Google Visualization connection with WattDepot in both visual chart and table form, a browser supplying sensor data summaries in an easy to work with interface, and a monitor capable of updating at a fast pace to give up to date information. Robert Brewer informed us that the monitor system is not ready on the WattDepot side of things, which means our focus shifted to the first 3 concepts.
After meeting with Robert Brewer, we knew what we needed to do and we had places to start. Carbonometer and Greenometer, two projects from last semester, were suggested as functional starting points to work off of (without simply copying and pasting their work) and with the goal of Google visualization in mind served as our point of reference. We began looking into the code and how it works. Ed and I realized that Carbonometer was not working with Google Visualization and Greenometer had not integrated it yet, so we needed to begin by finding out what was wrong with Carbonometer. In the meantime we each began looking up parts of the work ahead, my focus being on understanding parts of Carbonometer and the Google Visualization API to integrate into the system.
Discussing with Ed and Bao we started trying to figure out where to go from there. You can imagine the difficulty of figuring out just how to go from here, it’s similar to needing to take a go-cart and figuring out how to take it and form it into a car; we knew the goal, we had a model to work with, but we had to add more. This being a new project and our first week back in school, we weren’t set in our schedules or sure of what would be ahead of us. We meet informally trying to figure out how to divide the work and what to make of our work so that we could make progress each week and constantly. Ed took project lead for a bit in terms of setting things down in stone and provided us both the Google Project page and the Issues we discussed on it. We decided to spend the week taking apart and researching, then using that to create the basis of the pages we’ll be creating. We decided that while we have them marked by person each person is taking a sort of lead in that aspect and seeking out help from our partners can help us reach our ends together.
Our goal now: Create the basic page and backbone code to get a page to at least load Google visualization using our combined skills in html, wicket, Javascript, and WattDepot. We’ll be meeting with our professor and Robert Brewer again to help structure ourselves out and add a little confirmation in our direction so that we can drive forward.
Look forward to seeing some results next week.
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