Interns@SmartGrid_group

Today we report of a short interview we had with two of our interns, who have been working for one month on developing a web-based home energy management system, consisting in an Android application and a web service.

What's your name? 

Matthias

What are you studying?

I have been studying electronics and technical informatics a the HTL Mössingerstraße in Klagenfurt. This year I finished the 2nd class. 

What are your expectations for the future?

After the HTL I want to study software/game development and found a software company.

What your working on?

I worked on two different versions of the same Android app, as well as a REST webservice implemented in PHP.

Basically, I have designed and implemented a MySQL database, and used the php webservice to handle the data and expose the functionalities to the android app I then developed. The apps differ for the JSON protocol used. In fact, only one of these apps is using the php webservice I implemented, the other one is a solution we prepared to mantain retro-compatibility with the old version of the app that was already working for an older project and running on the Google App Engine platform.

Beside calling the REST interface, the apps also implement a smart notification system which exploits the Google Cloud messaging infrastructure to implement push messages from the cloud to the terminals. We use this smart notification system to inform users upon occurrence of certain events of interest.

 
What did you like of the project?

I like the idea to show the users how much they consume. I think it would be cool if in future energy providers such as Kelag worked with an automatic metering system, so that nobody is required to read the electricity meter for being charged and it is easier to get an understanding of how energy is actually used.

What's your name?

Alexander

What are you studying?

Electronics and technical informatics at the HTL Mössingerstraße in Klagenfurt.

This year I finished the 4° class, therefore next year I will conclude the HTL.

What are your expectations for the future?

After working for our military I would like to start studying in a similar kind of education or this combined with economics.

What your working on?

During my internship I worked on interactive data visualization. At the beginning I analyzed existing libraries and made a summary of their characteristics before selecting the ones we were looking for. Then, I prepared a graphical interface exploiting the Google Chart and the Chap links chart libraries. The website can do the same things of the Android application.

Basically, the system collects events, such as running a washing machine, which are enhanced by a cost and a duration and shown on a timeline. We can also see the trends for the costs, as users can add money to devices and get an understanding of the cost of carrying out daily life activities.

Currently the data is retrieved from the database using PHP, and all events and payments are shown on the timeline. This raises several issues on performance that I am currently trying to solve using asynchronous calls to the DB, using XMLHttpRequest (i.e., the famous AJAX used in many of the websites we used everyday). I am also investigating ways of keeping the interface up to date, especially concerning the itemization of the energy consumed for the day, using periodically running procedures and/or using triggers on the database.

What did you like of the project?

I had the possibility to work on something I haven’t worked with before. I didn’t have much knowledge on javascript and php but after this month I can say I have programmed a whole website, using advanced tools such as sessions and cookies. I think this was more useful for me than working with programming languages I already know better.