Comments on: Survey of Home Monitoring & Control Systems at the Solar Decathlon 2009 http://patricksmith.org/blog/2009/10/survey-of-home-monitoring-control-systems-at-the-solar-decathlon-2009/ software / business / design / social good Mon, 04 Jan 2010 18:48:51 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Johnny Rodgers http://patricksmith.org/blog/2009/10/survey-of-home-monitoring-control-systems-at-the-solar-decathlon-2009/comment-page-1/#comment-36 Johnny Rodgers Mon, 04 Jan 2010 18:48:51 +0000 http://patricksmith.org/blog/?p=29#comment-36 Hi Patrick, Great to talk to you at the decathlon about our control and feedback system. A couple things: We're actually Team Ontario/BC, as we're made up of three universities in Canada, two in Ontario (Waterloo, Ryerson), and one in British Columbia (Simon Fraser University). Since the Simon Fraser team was responsible for the systems you're surveying, it seems appropriate to recognize the multi-province team name. At this time, the only point of contact between the Rails app and mControl is through a subset of the SOAP API. As written, it's not really a full wrapper for the available automation API, and the API is not exposed via a REST interface (commands and requests happen internal to the application logic on the server side, as opposed to through client-accessible URLs). However, there are no technical reasons why this couldn't be done. Thanks again for the write-up and compliments. - Johnny (Designer/Developer, North House UI team) Hi Patrick,

Great to talk to you at the decathlon about our control and feedback system.

A couple things:

We’re actually Team Ontario/BC, as we’re made up of three universities in Canada, two in Ontario (Waterloo, Ryerson), and one in British Columbia (Simon Fraser University). Since the Simon Fraser team was responsible for the systems you’re surveying, it seems appropriate to recognize the multi-province team name.

At this time, the only point of contact between the Rails app and mControl is through a subset of the SOAP API. As written, it’s not really a full wrapper for the available automation API, and the API is not exposed via a REST interface (commands and requests happen internal to the application logic on the server side, as opposed to through client-accessible URLs). However, there are no technical reasons why this couldn’t be done.

Thanks again for the write-up and compliments.

- Johnny (Designer/Developer, North House UI team)

]]> By: Andrew McCain http://patricksmith.org/blog/2009/10/survey-of-home-monitoring-control-systems-at-the-solar-decathlon-2009/comment-page-1/#comment-19 Andrew McCain Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:53:09 +0000 http://patricksmith.org/blog/?p=29#comment-19 Minnesota's ICON Solar House came at the controls systems with a hybrid approach, using the CS datalogger and switching controller to use passive monitoring, create an active manual control, and then automate it. Additionally, we were taking information directly from the inverters on the supply side as well as branch circuit monitoring on the load side. The plan was to marry these systems to the Cortexa 7202 home automation unit, providing a more user friendly interface. This is still a hope in the next use of the system. Please feel free to contact me with any questions you may have about the house! Regards Minnesota’s ICON Solar House came at the controls systems with a hybrid approach, using the CS datalogger and switching controller to use passive monitoring, create an active manual control, and then automate it.

Additionally, we were taking information directly from the inverters on the supply side as well as branch circuit monitoring on the load side.

The plan was to marry these systems to the Cortexa 7202 home automation unit, providing a more user friendly interface. This is still a hope in the next use of the system.

Please feel free to contact me with any questions you may have about the house!

Regards

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