Obtaining meaningful information from a large set of data can be very valuable. The manner in which you represent and view data allows you to analyze and draw conclusions about important characteristics of a data set. However, it is often difficult to quickly visualize large sets of data clearly and accurately in a representation of your choice.
We plan to resolve many of these issues by creating a simple to use interface between a data source and visualizations such as charts, graphs and gauges. The main goal of this project is to provide a user with the tools to easily marry various types of data in a database with a collection of various flash visualizations. To do this we will be using many tools including FusionWidgits for the flash visualizations, Axure RP to create a user interface, and SQL Server to manage sample data. The extent of the programming work will be done in ColdFusion, JavaScript, HTML, and XML.
In the end our application will allow other developers to provide their own users with a simple and fast way to view any kind of data and deliver meaningful results to their clients.
Wireless sensor networks are an increasingly popular way to gather accurate information about the world around us in real time. They are portable, easy to set up, and convenient to use. Since almost any kind of information can be gathered, the possibilities for developing wireless sensor networks are almost boundless.
The specific wireless sensor network being developed in this project will be used to gather information about electricity consumption. This will be accomplished by using wireless nodes to collect information from sensors connected in series with electrical lines as well as sensors that can be externally attached. The information will be gathered into a central database and will be accessible via a webpage so that clients can see their power consumption habits.
The overall goal of this project is for people to be able to assess their power consumption habits and see what they are willing to change, leading to a more efficient use of electricity. Another use for the information gathered may be to set up a system where some appliances, such as air conditioning units, could alter their power draw based on the consumption of the rest of the house in an attempt to reduce draw at peak usage times.
“Saver Switch” program is currently offered by Xcel Energy to cut down on energy usage. The participants of the program have their air conditioners turned off by Xcel for 15 to 20 minute intervals depending on their respective power grid. This decreases peak energy demand, thus taking away the need to build additional power plants and transmission lines.
However, this method does not take into consideration individual household temperatures. An approach to this problem is to create “smart” saver switches. By using wireless sensor networks, we can coordinate multiple air conditioners in a neighborhood to make smarter choices when switching on and off the air conditioners. The wireless sensors will gather temperature data from the households and with a distributive algorithm, determine which air conditioners to turn on and shut off.
During the field session, we are going to develop a distributive algorithm and a central algorithm as a control. Then we will implement the algorithms on ten environmental enclosures we will build, which will mimic the typical household on a much smaller scale.
The goal of this project is the recruitment of high school and middle school students of the Mines summer technology club into the Computer Science department. To garner a further interest in programming among potential Mines students the intent of this project is to design fun and challenging labs. The project creates an environment for students to receive a hands on introduction to basic programming concepts with little or no programming experience necessary. The students will use a graphical user interface (GUI) to create a list of commands to tell a scribbler robot to locate a "hot spot" designated by temperature and find the shortest path back to its originating position. The scribbler robot will track the temperature differences using a sensor called the Sun Spot and will report the temperature to a constantly updated graph back at the user's computer.
The main concern with the existing scribbler programming interface is its lack of intuitive design for students unfamiliar with it. The approach to solving this problem is to design an interface that is both efficient and intuitive to program. An easy interface would allow students to focus on the programming aspects of the lab instead of struggling with a confusing interface.
Rich internet applications (RIAs) and Software as a Service (SaaS) are rapidly becoming a dominant force in software development, and knowledge of how to develop RIAs is becoming increasingly important. Data Verity is a retail consulting firm that provides its clients with different types of services via the internet. Our goal is to create versatile, interactive, and customizable graphical representations of data. We will use Flash (as seen on www.amcharts.com), Javascript (particularly AJAX and ExtJS), Java Applets, and Java (particully JFreeChart) to accomplish these goals.
Mining and construction companies often use databases to put together work orders, but the large scale of these databases makes it a time-consuming process. Dimensional Technology Solutions (DTS) has a user interface called eMESA that uses these same databases, but streamlines the process of managing work orders and scheduling. DTS would like a browser-based touch screen interface that will make eMESA quick and intuitive for use with Smartboards and other touch screens.
Our team will accomplish this using the Internet multimedia language Silverlight on a C# code base. We will be programming in an Agile development environment, and plan on releasing three iterations on a two-week cycle. The first iteration of the project will be to create an application with a purely visual interface that allows multiple objects to be created, moved, and merged with one another. In later iterations, the application will connect with the existing eMESA architecture. As a result, the objects will inherit properties of the various database elements and interact appropriately.
DTS specializes in software for maintenance professionals with their eMESA Live application. They would like to add capabilities to interface features of the eMESA website with the iPhone. In essence, the services they would like to provide would allow managers, such as those from a mining company, to schedule work orders on the eMESA Live website and have the details of the order sent to a worker, live, directly accessible via an iPhone Application.
The scope of the work to be accomplished for the summer field session is the development of the framework for the iPhone Application, with a focus on a web administrator interface, the authentication to the iPhone by the eMESA server, and basic data exchange via web services. A large feature set for the iPhone Application itself is not planned for the scope of the summer work.
To accomplish the project, a few different software items must be constructed. An iPhone-user management screen must be made that is accessible on the internet, allowing a manager to add or remove iPhone User login permissions on eMESA for employees using iPhones. The next item we will implement is the groundwork for the eMESA iPhone Application. This program will be implemented with authentication methods and some basic data reporting. For the iPhone to communicate with eMESA, a web service will be installed on eMESA to handle information transfer and authentication. When a user iPhone account is created via the web interface for an employee to access eMESA on the iPhone, the user will receive an email with an authentication file for the eMESA iPhone Application to connect to the eMESA webservice. The iPhone application will then communicate through the web service with eMESA and store the necessary information to authenticate with eMESA for future connections and the ability to retrieve data for reports.
The task given by Fowler Software Design is to create a better product out of existing software. The existing software, or The Link, is a user interface that connects the company to a database of information such as activity reports of technicians, client records and a history of projects.
The requirements include an update to the old database, a conversion from FoxPro to Unified Data, and an improvement upon the interface. The project is necessary to help with client and company relations by giving the staff access to the company database in the form of invoices and other documents that can be sent to the client.
The problem will be broken down into smaller subtasks and will be completed in parts. Tasks such as database conversion can be separated from the update of the interface for database access; one is done in Microsoft SQL while the other is done in C#. Two languages allow the project to be broken up into parts and integrated up into a final product.
Our project is to create a process to identify size, number of I/O calls, and the file storage methodology of I/O calls for Los Alamos National Laboratories' global parallel supercomputing network. Our team will create a kernel module to trace and log this information without requiring the alteration of applications making the I/O calls. This will be implemented using the FUSE userspace filesystem.
Newmont Mining Corporation is a gold mining company with a large international presence. Newmont has mines all over the world, and a number of potential mines. Geostatisticians determine the economic feasibility of these possible gold mines based on complex statistics gathered at each site. Software with the purpose of analyzing this data already exists, but is outdated and not user friendly. Complete analysis of the data also requires the use of several different applications. Our final product will be a single user friendly application. It will perform the required analyses in addition to allowing the user to output the results of their analysis in a file format that can easily be saved or printed, a feature not included in the existing software.
Our product will feature a graphical user interface, a feature desired by the primary users of the software. The GUI will allow users to choose input parameters and choose the file for analysis. A new feature we are implementing will even allow users to analyze multiple files of data at once. The results of the program will be displayed in a statistical summary format and a graphical format. In the case of analyzing multiple data sets, graphs will be plotted on a single set of axes to allow for easy comparison. Our process will be guided by the software we intend to replace. By comparing the results of each program, we can verify the correctness of statistics generated by the new version. The final software will perform more operations than the previous versions while being easier to use and bringing it into the twenty-first century.
The work that we are doing at Sun Microsystems involves making a CD for installation of OpenSolaris. The particular motivation for this CD comes from the need to install OpenSolaris from a terminal and also the installation of OpenSolaris on computers that do not contain graphics cards compatible with this operating system. This means that our purpose is to provide a CD for installation of OpenSolaris that delivers a purely text-based interface for the user. Given the variety of resources available, our approach will start by researching existing installers and follow with research specifically on how we plan to implement the text-based interface. We will create the CD by using some of the files from the other installers and implementing our own text-based interface, and then compiling it with the distribution constructor to make an ISO image, which we will burn onto a CD. Throughout this process we will also coordinate with other team members at Sun to create the proper documentation and to ensure proper testing of the product that we create.