http://makonin.com/report_consumption.html.

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Smart homes of the future will have a number of different types of sensors. What types of sensors and how they will be used depends on the behaviour needed from the smart home. Using the sensors to automatically determine if a home is occupied can lead to a wide range of benefits. For example, it could trigger a change in the thermostat setting to save money, or even a change in security monitoring systems. Our prototype Home Occupancy Agent (HOA), which we present in this paper, uses a rule based system that monitors power consumption from meters and ambient light sensor readings in order to determine occupancy. The agent is also able to determine when the occupants are asleep, and thus provide the potential for further energy saving opportunities.

Keywords: Smart Home, Intelligent Agent, Occupancy Detection, Power Consumption, Ambient Light Sensors, Sleep Detection, Energy Conservation, Sustainability.

Keep your eyes peeled as there are a number of other submissions that I am either waiting on review or in the midst of writing. Write on…

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• The Affect of Lifestyle Factors on Eco-Visualization Design (eco-sustain.org)

As people become more concerned with the need to conserve their power consumption we need to find ways to inform them of how electricity is being consumed within the home. There are a number of devices that have been designed using different forms, sizes, and technologies. We are interested in large ambient displays that can be read at a glance and from a distance as informative art. However, from these objectives come a number of questions that need to be explored and answered. To what degree might lifestyle factors influence the design of eco-visualizations? To answer this we need to ask how people with varying lifestyle factors perceive the utility of such devices and their placement within a home. We explore these questions by creating four ambient display prototypes. We take our prototypes and subject them to a user study to gain insight as to the questions posed above. This paper discusses our prototypes in detail and the results and findings of our user study.

Keywords: eco-visualization, informative art, ambient display, power consumption, energy conservation, sustainability.

CGI 2012 received 178 papers, 111 were rejected, 35 were selected for the CGI 2012 Special Issue of The Visual Computer,  32 were selected for the Electronic Proceedings.

I will be updating the Elements of Consumption (EoC) project page soon. I plan to be releasing the project source code as an open source project along with details on how to create your own custom ambient display.

Climate Delusions Talk

Today the Royal Society of Canada invited Dr. Mark Jaccard, Professor with the School of Resource and Environmental Management at Simon Fraser University to talk about climate change modelling. He presented a very good talk about how and why we will not be meeting any of the emission reduction targets.

Abstract: Two decades of research into the risk of human-induced climate change has focused on climate science and the costs of greenhouse gas mitigation. It is increasingly obvious, however, that the research focus must include understanding the reasons why humans have been incapable of effective action in spite of scientific consensus on the climate threat, economic consensus on the relatively modest cost of mitigation, and continuous commitments by political leaders. This talk will combine science, economics, policy design and human cognition to explain how self-interest biases in human cognition have fostered delusions about the problem and its solution – and what to do about these.

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• Mark Jaccard calls out Stephen Harper on oil sands (deepclimate.org)
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I will post a link to a real-time consumption report soon. I am having issue with my ModbusTCP server and a lack of time to program the report.

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Arduino RTC Shield

I have now posted information on the Arduino Power Meter Reader (APMR) project page on how I created the Arduino RTC (Real Time Clock) Shield I used.

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Nature's Garden

For a while now I have spent some of my mornings every week at Nature’s Garden an organic coffee and eatery. Their food is excellent and their coffee is the cheapest on campus (Burnaby Mountain Campus, SFU).  The places bustle and atmosphere has many-a-time inspired me to write while under the pressure of a course or conference deadline.

In fact, I am here now writing this post. Your should come by and say hi to Bill and Dolores (the owners).

Arduino RS485 Shield

Well I have been too busy with course work    …but I  found some time to post up the schematic for the Arduino RS485 Shield I used for my Arduino Power Meter Reader (APMR) project.

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The Queen of Green

Last Thursday (October 27th) Lindsay Coulter, David Suzuki‘s Queen of Green spoke at BCIT. She presented discussion and tips on how to turn a home into a healthy and sustainable environment. Some of her tips include:

• avoid canned foods, the can contains a BPA lining;
• if you want people in the office to throw out less garbage, label the garbage can “landfill”;
• the “Christmas shrimp ring” is one of the worst things to eat this holiday season;
• when buying products think of their “end of life” , e.g. silicon (currently) cannot be recycled;
• and there was so much more (you had to be there).

Some tips I already new about, but others where an eye opener. She also talked about the benefits of forest bathing, and idea that came out of Japan.

On another note: David Suzuki just finished airing an interesting 3 part series on nano technology on CBC. You should check out The Nano Revolution: Will Nano Save the Planet? Part 3 talks about how nano technology has the potential to clean up the environmental mess we have created.

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Wire Cabinet Finished

Well I have been very busy with course work. I though I would post a quick update.

I have finally finished reorganizing my wiring cabinet and I now have it jam-packed with all sort of equipment. As seen on the right.

I also stated the Arduino Power Meter Reader (APMR) project page which I will slowly add information to in the coming weeks. I will also be posting the source code on GitHub in the next couple of days. This will be released as an open source project.

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