Dear Freifunkers,
please allow me to update you on the progress if the powquty Project within Google Summer of Code 2016 at Freifunk.
As mentioned in my last blog the goal of the project is to create a LEDE package which ensures three functionalities:
- Retrieving sampled voltage data from the power quality measurement device via USB
- Calculating statistical power quality parameters (such as: avg. voltage, harmonics, ect.) form the retrieved voltage samples
- Provisioning of the calculated parameters for retrieval and graphical representation
Herein I will give a short update about the progress of these functionalities.
For this project we are using an off-the-shelf USB-based oscilloscope “WeSense” from the company A.Eberle. The oscilloscope provides real time samples of measured voltage from the power plug via USB bus, using a binary protocol and a sample frequency up to 10kHz. Initially the oscilloscopes USB bus supported the host functionality only. Hencethe router would need to act in USB device mode, which is a rather unusual mode to be supported by todays WiFi router platforms. To overcome this limitation, aforementioned company agreed to provide us with another hardware implementation that implements the USB device functionality with optional five volts power feeding functionality. The new hardware is expected on my desk in mid July.
As a counter measure for this delay, we started implementing an emulator, that locally generates a signal-samples, which are then organised in packets as similar to the binary protocol.
Regarding the calculation of the power quality parameters functionality, we successfully ported the power quality library (in Ansi C) from A.Eberle to compile and run under Linux LEDE. The libraries functionality allows to calculate the frequency, effective voltage, harmonics, and phase shift, from the signal samples in an efficient way. We provide this library as binary blob, since it is basically not open sourced (yet), and originated from the manufacturer himself. Now it is ported for LEDE, and can be used for our purposes.
For the provisioning of the calculated parameters, we intend to implement a luci app that shows the calculated parameters.
The rest of the project timeline is depicted below:
Working phase: June 20th – July 10th
- Finalize the emulator
- Integration with the power quality library.
- first prototype of the provisioning functionality
Working phase: July 11th – July 24th
- Finalize the provisioning functionality
- prototype implementation of sample retrieval (given that the hardware is delivered)
Working phase: July 25th – August 7th
- Integration of the three functionalities into a working implementation
- Software Testing and bug fixing
- Documentation of the integrated functionalities
Working phase: August 8th – August 21st
- Buffer for possible delays
More updates in the upcoming weeks.
BR,
Neez