April 18, 2009
Meuon
1 comment
keywords:
UtiliFlex
Juice
GPL
PrePaid
Electricity
| Proud Papa Again |
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Every once in a while you get to build something you are really proud of. The "UtiliFlex Juice PrePaid/Pay-As-You-Go Electricity/Utility platform" has become such a beast.
I'm standing next to a complete working system, including an awesome firewall, 2 Asterisk based IVR servers, SMS/text Gateways, and an Intel Modular Server. It's about to be shipped to Guyana Power and Light in South America and will help run a significant percentage of the utility. the screen shows only one of the compute modules, with 8 CPU's, 32gb of ram.. etc..
It will allow people in that country to do something they haven't been doing much of: Buy electricity. In their context, prepaid is an enabler. It allows people to purchase electricity as they need it and as they can afford it, without a penalty for getting disconnected because they can't afford the bill that came too late for them to do anything about.
There are some people that deserve some serious credit for helping me get Juice to this level of system:
Joe Gordon. My cohort in UtiliFlex, owner of UtiliSol He's been a pleasure to work with and develop Juice with. His vision, drive, insight, intelligence, tolerence and ethics are without peer.
Lucius Hilley, Programmer. The kind that does hex/ascii/cipher math in his head whle coding in 3 or 6 languages at once while putting up with a lot of schtuff from me.
Isaac Ingram, Programmer. While we aren't using much of his excellent mapserver/event-outage management code in this system, a little of his soul permeates.
Dave Brockman, SysAdmin. Helped me configure and setup the Intel Modular Server in record time, without laughing too much.
Catherine Colby, Tim Galbreth and Rob Shaw, UtiliFlex Sales and Project team. Lots of interface, code and functionality improvements and quality control, as well as a significant part of the documentation.
Oh, and Ben, Judy, Mark and the team at MicroTronics for being a great supplier of high end hardware.
Side note: Isaac did the original GeekLabs logo's back in 1998. I think I've grown to look more like my cartoon self over time.. |
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September 06, 2008
meuon
0 comments
keywords:
PHP
Data
Visualization
| Low Tech Data Display. |
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 There is a lot of push towards incredibly powerful web toolkits. Very complex javascript, lots of embedded flash. But that requires powerful client computers, and all that JavaScript/ActionScript has fits crossing domains, for good reasons. So you have to go back to old school. Enter PHP and GDlib creating graphics on the fly at the web server. Geeky kWh Gauge example in PHP will create (given some assumptions) nice looking graphs as an image and will try to resize itself and the data nicely based on parameters given.
It's useful for embedding data displays low tech browsers as well as things like Chumby's, Google Electricity/kWh Gadgets and other widgets where everything but images seem to be cached, relayed, or protected from embedding data from other sources. The best part is the looks you get when showing to "Web 2.0 kids" who can't conceive of doing it without an IDE, JavaScript/ActionScript and possibly a fat embed/object download.. |
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August 03, 2008
Meuon
0 comments
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Ubuntu
CellModem
Verizon
| Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron and Verizon USB727 |
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Sometimes, Linux just makes things too easy to believe. Especially Ubuntu. We needed to make a laptop online, just about anywhere.
We bought an Verizon USB 727 and plugged it into an Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron powered laptop. Tailing /var/log/messages, I see an Airprime driver installed as /dev/ttyUSB0 (actually, /dev/ttyUSB0-/dev/ttyUSB15). Lets see if we get lucky:
as root:
#ln -s /dev/ttyUSB0 /dev/nodem
#pppconfig
- create a connection,
- named provider
- dynamic dns
- PAP Authentication
- use:YourDevicePhoneNumber@vzw3g.com as a login
- vzw as a password.
- 115200 as speed
- tone (of couse)
- #777 as number to dial
- /dev/modem as modem (or /dev/ttyUSB0)
- Pick "Finish".
And now, the commands "pon" will initiate the connection (mine worked the first time) and "poff" will hang up.
"plog" is useful for seeing the log as it connects.
Because of the Airprime driver, it will get amazing speeds, my speed tests are showing bursts in the 800kbps range.
WooHoo!
The bad news: $60 per month for a high usage plan from Verizon. Keeping the sales droids from trying to configure WiFi or networking while at a clients location: Priceless.
The USB727 Card
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March 29, 2008
Meuon
0 comments
keywords:
| UtiliFlex Smart Metering |
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 A few month ago I got started in an interesting rebirth/renewal/upgrade of an existing company, UtiliSol. That's now become a new business formed by Joe Gordon of UtiliSol and myself (GeekLabs) called UtiliFlex. Working with Joe's been a pleasant reminder of what it's like to work with a competent experienced professional with focus and a non-nonsense let's do business right attitude. It's stupid little things like UPS dropping off an Aeron chair for me, ordering two of gadget's it'd be nice to have one of as well as some fantastic work with clients, contracts, proposals.. good stuff for both parties.
We're coming out of the gate with a bang, some big projects in the works, and a pleasant surprise; we got nominated for the Chattanooga Technology Council's Early Innovator Award. The press and attention is both welcome, and distracting at the same time. The price of fame.
Anyway, this is also a time sink, While we've hired some talent for key parts, I've got to get and keep my head down on what we are now calling "Juice 2.0" - which is more than just software, it's a whole collection of systems working well together.
Nancy and I went out to a play last night.. and I turned down two projects bumping into people. It's an interesting world out there, why is it when you are busy, they come out of the woodwork, and when you -need- paying work, it's scarce. The Murphy's law of freelancing?
Well, I think my freelancing days are over for a while. :)
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February 07, 2008
Meuon
0 comments
keywords:
| Proud Papa |
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| The NFPA's web based learning system came online tonight on version 3.2 of "NextLMS", which is a very comprehensive learning management system I built over the last 2 years. It is GAS based, or at least it started that way, Add a few thousand lines of JavaScript, several thousand lines of PHP, and a team of really good smart people editing and providing content and it makes quite a complete system. It's easily the biggest system I have coded by myself and I'm proud of it. Have the NFPA using it makes me feel good, brings me back to my Clinical and Plant Engineering days. |
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