OK we are getting good data from our sensors, lets corral it into more useful chunks and store it in a database. We could make a database on the computer, but since we'd like to share this data, it makes more sense to put it online. There are custom services that are specifically designed to do this sort of thing like Pachube but I'm going to reinvent the wheel and design my own web-app that stores and displays energy data. (Mostly I want to play around with Google App Engine!)
You have 5 minutes!
We get data every few seconds from the XBee modem inside the kill-a-watt. We could, in theory, put data into our database every 2 seconds but that would quickly balloon the amount of storage necessary. It would also make sorting through the data difficult. So instead lets add up all the sensor data for 5 minutes and then take the average.
We'll do this by keeping two timers and one tally. One timer will track how long its been since the last sensor signal was sent, and the other will track if its been 5 minutes. The tally will store up all the Watt-hours (Watt measurements * time since last sensor data). Then at the end we can average by the 5 minutes
This chunk of code goes near the beginning, it creates the timers and tally and initializes them
... fiveminutetimer = lasttime = time.time() # get the current time cumulativewatthr = 0 ...
Then later on, after we get our data we can put in this chunk of code:
# add up the delta-watthr used since last reading
# Figure out how many watt hours were used since last reading
elapsedseconds = time.time() - lasttime
dwatthr = (avgwatt * elapsedseconds) / (60.0 * 60.0) # 60 seconds in 60 minutes = 1 hr
lasttime = time.time()
print "\t\tWh used in last ",elapsedseconds," seconds: ",dwatthr
cumulativewatthr += dwatthr
# Determine the minute of the hour (ie 6:42 -> '42')
currminute = (int(time.time())/60) % 10
# Figure out if its been five minutes since our last save
if (((time.time() - fiveminutetimer) >= 60.0) and (currminute % 5 == 0)):
# Print out debug data, Wh used in last 5 minutes
avgwattsused = cumulativewatthr * (60.0*60.0 / (time.time() - fiveminutetimer))
print time.strftime("%Y %m %d, %H:%M"),", ",cumulativewatthr,"Wh = ",avgwattsused," W average")
# Reset our 5 minute timer
fiveminutetimer = time.time()
cumulativewatthr = 0
Download wattcher-5minreporter.py from the Download page. If you run this, youll get a steady stream of:
Near the end you can see the timestamp, the Watthrs used in the last few minutes and the average Wattage.
Multisensor!
We have good data but so far it only works with one sensor. Multiple sensors will mess it up! Time to add support for more than one XBee so that I can track a few rooms. I'll do that by creating an object class in python, and using the XBee address (remember that from part 1?) to track. I'll replace the code we just wrote with the following:
At the top, instead of the timer variables, I'll have a full class declaration, and create an array to store them:
####### store sensor data and array of histories per sensor
class Fiveminutehistory:
def __init__(self, sensornum):
self.sensornum = sensornum
self.fiveminutetimer = time.time() # track data over 5 minutes
self.lasttime = time.time()
self.cumulativewatthr = 0
def addwatthr(self, deltawatthr):
self.cumulativewatthr += float(deltawatthr)
def reset5mintimer(self):
self.cumulativewatthr = 0
self.fiveminutetimer = time.time()
def avgwattover5min(self):
return self.cumulativewatthr * (60.0*60.0 / (time.time() - self.fiveminutetimer))
def __str__(self):
return "[ id#: %d, 5mintimer: %f, lasttime; %f, cumulativewatthr: %f ]" % (self.sensornum, self.fiveminutetimer, self.lasttime, self.cumulativewatthr)
######### an array of histories
sensorhistories = []
Right below that I'll create a little function to help me create and retrieve these objects. Given an XBee ID number it either makes a new one or gets the reference to it
####### retriever
def findsensorhistory(sensornum):
for history in sensorhistories:
if history.sensornum == sensornum:
return history
# none found, create it!
history = Fiveminutehistory(sensornum)
sensorhistories.append(history)
return history
# retreive the history for this sensor
sensorhistory = findsensorhistory(xb.address_16)
#print sensorhistory
# add up the delta-watthr used since last reading
# Figure out how many watt hours were used since last reading
elapsedseconds = time.time() - sensorhistory.lasttime
dwatthr = (avgwatt * elapsedseconds) / (60.0 * 60.0) # 60 seconds in 60 minutes = 1 hr
sensorhistory.lasttime = time.time()
print "\t\tWh used in last ",elapsedseconds," seconds: ",dwatthr
sensorhistory.addwatthr(dwatthr)
# Determine the minute of the hour (ie 6:42 -> '42')
currminute = (int(time.time())/60) % 10
# Figure out if its been five minutes since our last save
if (((time.time() - sensorhistory.fiveminutetimer) >= 60.0) and (currminute % 5 == 0)):
# Print out debug data, Wh used in last 5 minutes
avgwattsused = sensorhistory.avgwattover5min()
print time.strftime("%Y %m %d, %H:%M"),", ",sensorhistory.cumulativewatthr,"Wh = ",avgwattsused," W average"
# Reset our 5 minute timer
sensorhistory.reset5mintimer()
Onto the database!
The App Engine
So we want to have an networked computer to store this data so we can share the data, but we really don't want to have to run a server from home! What to do? Well as mentioned before, you can use Pachube or similar, but I will show how to roll-your-own with Google App Engine (GAE). GAE is basically a free mini-webserver hosted by Google, that will run basic webapps without the hassle of administrating a database server. Each webapp has storage, some frameworks and can use Google accounts for authentication. To get started I suggest checking out the GAE website, documentation, etc. I'll assume you've gone through the tutorials and jump right into designing my power data storage app called Wattcher (a little confusing I know)
First, the app.yaml file which defines my app looks like this:
application: wattcher version: 1 runtime: python api_version: 1 handlers: - url: /.* script: wattcherapp.py
Next, we'll dive into the python code for our webapp. First, the includes and database index. To create a database, we actually define it -in the python file-, GAE then figures out what kind of database to create for you by following those directions (very different than MySQL where you'd create the DB separately)
import cgi, datetime from google.appengine.api import users from google.appengine.ext import webapp from google.appengine.ext.webapp.util import run_wsgi_app from google.appengine.ext import db class Powerusage(db.Model): author = db.UserProperty() # the user sensornum = db.IntegerProperty() # can have multiple sensors watt = db.FloatProperty() # each sending us latest Watt measurement date = db.DateTimeProperty(auto_now_add=True) # timestamp
Each 'page' or function of our webapp needs its own class. Lets start with the function that allows us to store data in the DB. I'll call it PowerUpdate.
class PowerUpdate(webapp.RequestHandler):
def get(self):
# make the user log in
if not users.get_current_user():
self.redirect(users.create_login_url(self.request.uri))
powerusage = Powerusage()
if users.get_current_user():
powerusage.author = users.get_current_user()
#print self.request
if self.request.get('watt'):
powerusage.watt = float(self.request.get('watt'))
else:
self.response.out.write('Couldnt find \'watt\' GET property!')
return
if self.request.get('sensornum'):
powerusage.sensornum = int(self.request.get('sensornum'))
else:
powerusage.sensornum = 0 # assume theres just one or something
powerusage.put()
self.response.out.write('OK!')
When we send a request to do that with a GET call (ie requesting the webpage), we'll first make sure the user is authenticated and logged in so we know their name. Then we'll create a new database entry by initializing a new instantiation of Powerusage. Then we'll look the GET request for the watt data, which would be in the format watt=39.2 or similar. That's parsed for us, thankfully and we can also get the sensor number which is passed in the format sensornum=3. Finally we can store the data into the permanent database
Next is a useful debugging function, it will simply print out all the data it has received for your account!
class DumpData(webapp.RequestHandler):
def get(self):
# make the user log in
if not users.get_current_user():
self.redirect(users.create_login_url(self.request.uri))
self.response.out.write('<html><body>Here is all the data you have sent us:<p>')
powerusages = db.GqlQuery("SELECT * FROM Powerusage WHERE author = :1 ORDER BY date", users.get_current_user())
for powerused in powerusages:
if powerused.sensornum:
self.response.out.write('<b>%s</b>\'s sensor #%d' %
(powerused.author.nickname(), powerused.sensornum))
else:
self.response.out.write(<b>%s</b>' % powerused.author.nickname())
self.response.out.write(' used: %f Watts at %s<p>' % (powerused.watt, powerused.date))
self.response.out.write("</body></html>")
Finally we'll make a basic 'front page' that will show the last couple of datapoints sent:
class MainPage(webapp.RequestHandler):
def get(self):
self.response.out.write('<html><body>Welcome to Wattcher!<p>Here are the last 10 datapoints:<p>')
powerusages = db.GqlQuery("SELECT * FROM Powerusage ORDER BY date DESC LIMIT 10")
for powerused in powerusages:
if powerused.sensornum:
self.response.out.write('<b>%s</b>\'s sensor #%d' %
(powerused.author.nickname(), powerused.sensornum))
else:
self.response.out.write('<b>%s</b>' % powerused.author.nickname())
self.response.out.write(' used: %f Watts at %s<p>' % (powerused.watt, powerused.date))
self.response.out.write("</body></html>")
Finally, we have a little initializer structure that tells GAE what pages link to what functions:
application = webapp.WSGIApplication(
[('/', MainPage),
('/report', PowerUpdate),
('/dump', DumpData)],
debug=True)
def main():
run_wsgi_app(application)
if __name__ == "__main__":
main()
Test!
OK lets try it out, first lets visit http://wattcher.appspot.com/report
We can also visit the GAE control panel and browse the data 'by hand'
Anyways, now that that's working, lets go back and add the reporting technology to our sensor-reader script.
Getting the report out
Only a little more hacking on the computer script and we're done. We want to add support for sending data to GAE. Unfortunately right now our authentication is done through Google accounts so its not easy to run on an Arduino. To adapt it you'd have to send the username in the Report GET and hope nobody else uses the same one (unless you also add a basic password system)
Anyhow, I totally ripped off how to do this from some nice people on the Internet
Download appengineauth.py from the download page, and change the first few lines if necessary. We hardcode the URL we're going to and the account/password as well as the GAE app name
users_email_address = "[email protected]" users_password = "mypassword" my_app_name = "wattcher" target_authenticated_google_app_engine_uri = 'http://wattcher.appspot.com/report'
The real work happens at this function sendreport where it connects and sends the Watt data to the GAE site:
def sendreport(sensornum, watt):
# this is where I actually want to go to
serv_uri = target_authenticated_google_app_engine_uri + "?watt="+str(watt)+"&sensornum="+str(sensornum)
serv_args = {}
serv_args['continue'] = serv_uri
serv_args['auth'] = authtoken
full_serv_uri = "http://wattcher.appspot.com/_ah/login?%s" % (urllib.urlencode(serv_args))
serv_req = urllib2.Request(full_serv_uri)
serv_resp = urllib2.urlopen(serv_req)
serv_resp_body = serv_resp.read()
# serv_resp_body should contain the contents of the
# target_authenticated_google_app_engine_uri page - as we will have been
# redirected to that page automatically
#
# to prove this, I'm just gonna print it out
print serv_resp_body
# Also, send it to the app engine
appengineauth.sendreport(xb.address_16, avgwattsused)
Don't forget to visit wattcher.appspot.com to check out the lastest readings:
Page last edited February 14, 2013
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