Checkpoint Reached: Wattdepot Apps At A Glance

It has been about a week since we have got started with our Wattdepot Apps project, so I'm here to report on our current progress.

The team has reached its first checkpoint and we have completed a functional Visualization! We have two checkpoints left including the Wattdepot browser and Realtime updates.

This first week had everyone planning a lot. We meet with Robert Brewer on two separate occasions for questions and we had our first meeting with Professor Johnson. We laid out a plan last week and have discussed the idea of introducing various ideas into future versions of the visualizer, such as user defined annotations to our visualization timeline and support for multiple selections.

After the initial planning stages, we separated the work load into three separate components. The wicket, the javascript and annotated timeline visualization, and the table visualization. Our group member Ed was quick to jump on the task and had completed the basic layout of the applications and included all the required drop down and wicket for user selection. Although I didn't have much time during the week to look at our project, I was able to free up my schedule over the weekend and have churned out the completed javascript within the html files and we now have a fully functional although basic annotated timeline visualization. We are currently waiting for Kendyll to add in the ability to choose between the timeline or a quick table format to view the data.

So what items are left on the list? We have the Wattdepot Browser and the Realtime updates. Since The third time cannot be worked on until Robert can update wattdepot to support this push of data will have decided to split up the work into two parts for the coming week. We will be working on enhancements for the visualization app to add more functionality to it and simplify the look. We will also be planning out the basic layout for the Browser. Our plans are to hopefully have both the Browser and the Visualizations working by next week, then work on enhancing the product until we can move onto the final leg before our February 9th milestone.

New Semester, New Beginnings, Same Old Wattdepot

After an uneventful holiday break, we are back to work in the new semester. This semester in software engineering we will be tackling the topic of energy and sustainability.

In our initial week we were debriefed on the our overall goals by Professor Philip Johnson, and then assigned sub-project teams.

The first subproject I will be working on for the first checkpoint is Wattdepot Apps. This is basically taking what we had been working on last semester and applying it into individual standalone distributable applications for wattdepot users.

On this project, I am joined by a former group member from our Greenometer wicket application from last semester Edward Meyer and classmate Kendyll Doi. We are also fortunate enough to have Robert Brew, the man behind wattdepot, on our team.

Together we are tasked with creating three main applications for the initial wattdepot apps. A standalone visualization using Google Visualization, a Wattdepot browser that will be similar to a GUI version of the Wattdepot CLI from the previous semester, and a Wattdepot monitor that will be bring us real time updates.

In our initial meeting, we met with Robert to discuss some of the requirements for the current sub-project. We will be putting the third part of the project on hold until Robert can get Wattdepot to allow pushing of data for the updates. Meanwhile the remaining three of us will be collaborating to complete the first two parts of the project by the time robert can update wattdepot for real time date updates.

We currently have our google-project page set up and have assigned issues to be worked on by the group members. We have started looking as ways into which we can implement the first part of the project, the google visualizations. One current problem we have come across is that one of the reference projects from last semester "Carbonometer", which used google visualizations, is currently not working. We are inquiring the group as to if it was a problem on their side or our side and we hope to get it resolved as soon as possible.

As for this coming week, we have a tentative schedule to get the basic visualizations working by the end of the week.