Please fix this: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/openbox/+bug/938379 bug.

How can something that will close X and drop you back to the login manager be ‘medium’  priority..

I KNOW ubuntu is about unity now, but I like to get work done.. Both GNOME (gnome-shell eats up 100% and stays unresponsive for me on several 12.04 machine) and OPENBOX are now completely unusable for me. They cause data lost.

I am currently stuck with XFCE, but this is just pain and torture..

TWxfbtmHnFey

Image from youless.nl

Image from youless.nl

YouLess is a cheap and small energy meter you attach to your the energy-meter you get from your electricity company. It is a small device that you can attach (using Ethernet cable) to your network. For more information see the youless.nl website.

The device has a few downsides;  a) it has limited storage space, b) it has little visualization, c) you cannot do any analysis.

a,b,c can be solved by automatically uploading the data to bidgely, but personally this is something I do not want.

So, as usual, I wrote I small tool that can get you some more insight in the energy usage.

EnergyPoint: A small tool to get insight

Getting the data

Because of the limited storage, it can only store 1 minute resolution data for the last hour, we need to store the data in a local db.

To get the data from the YouLess i use a cronjob that downloads data the past 30minutes every half hour. You can get the data in json format.
I use:

wget "http://192.150.0.40/V?f=j&h=1" -O `date +%Y-%m-%d-%H%M-1.json`
wget "http://192.150.0.40/V?f=j&h=2" -O `date +%Y-%m-%d-%H%M-2.json`

This downloads data from the past hour every 20 minutes,  this makes sure I do not loose data points if the cronjob is late or missed.

EnergyPoint imports this data into a custom sqlite database and will make sure no duplicate data is stored.

Importing data is as simple as:

ep import data/*.json

Analyzing the data

The following analyze are possible (I am looking to build more, ideas are welcome):

•     day:               Shows the average power consumption for each hour of the day.
•     weekdays:   Shows the average power consumption for each day of the week.
•     weeks:          Shows the energy consumption for each week of the year.
•     months:       Shows the energy consumption for each month of the year.
•     days:             Shows the energy consumption for each days of the year.
•    pattern <low> <high>:  Show the intervals (in the form of a histogram) where spikes between low-high occurs.

You can limit the the range these work on by specifying a range on the command-line:

• range <start date> <stop date>

So if you want to see the energy consumed on average per weekday over the past 2 weeks you can do: (numbers are dummy numbers)

$ ep statistics weekdays range  4/16/2012 4/30/2012
Range:            16/04/2012 - 00:00 --> 30/04/2012 - 00:00
Average power:      470.30 W
Energy consumed:    158.02 kWh
========== Week days ==========
Day:    Average:    Total:
 1      857.49 W     10.58 kWh
 2      766.46 W      8.40 kWh
 3      665.26 W     10.97 kWh
 4      779.53 W     11.71 kWh
 5      898.13 W     11.56 kWh
 6     1037.53 W     14.90 kWh
 7      870.62 W     10.89 kWh
===============================
Total:               79.10 kWh

Visualizing the data

Beside printing data out, it can also plot graphs:

• points:         Plot all the data points. (use in combination with range, or it will be slow)
• dayhours:    Shows the average power consumption for each hour of the day.
• weekdays:    Shows the average power consumption for each day of the week.
• weeks:           Shows the energy consumption for each week of the year.
• days:              Shows the energy consumption for each day of the year.
• months:        Shows the energy consumption for each month of the year.

And extra options for each command:

•     range <start date> <end date>   Limit the evaluated data to a certain range.
•     svg <filename>                  Outputs the graph to an SVG file.
•     average                         Plot an average line.
•     width <width in px>             The width of the output.
•     height <height in px>           The height of the output.
•     remove-avg:                     Tries to remove the ‘base’ usage and show just the ‘spikes’. Only works for points plot.
•     filter low high                    Only shows points that are between low and high. Only works with remove-avg in points plot.

So if you want a plot over the past day:

./ep  plot points range 4/27/2012 4/28/2012 average svg plot1.svg

Plot of 1 day.

Todo

There is still many things left todo in the tool, like cleanups, fix tooltips, etc. Help is (again) welcome.

It was written mostly on the train traveling from/to work. So do not be scared.

The code is written in: Vala, GTK 3, cairo, json-glib.

Download

You can get it from github: here

pre:
configure the network in logitech gui.
Do a first step on: https://github.com/DaveDavenport/squishybox/wiki/SqueezeBox-Touch (disable watchdog)

1. Format an empty SD card. (I used ext3, because I am shutting down, rebooting etc alot.. normally use ext2 for better lifetime of the card)
2. Extract the attached file to the SD card.  Edit squeezeos-boot.sh, to mount the music directory from the right location. (or disable that line if not used).
3. Pop it in the squeezebox and start it

This should give you a working MPD and simple GUI. Remote control will work.

Hope somebody can use it.

https://github.com/DaveDavenport/CrossCompilerGCCScript/blob/master/gcc_cross_compiler.sh

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#!/bin/bash
 
##
# Script to build GCC for microblaze.
# Written by Martijn Koedam (m.l.p.j.koedam@tue.nl)
#
# Current version is testing on ubuntu 11.04, 11.10 and 12.04
##
 
TARGET=microblaze-xilinx-elf
PROGRAM_PREFIX=mb-
 
BUILD_DIR=build
INSTALL_DIR=$PWD/install
 
CORES=8
 
GCC_URL=ftp://ftp.nluug.nl/mirror/languages/gcc/releases/gcc-4.7.0/gcc-4.7.0.tar.bz2
NEWLIB_URL=ftp://sources.redhat.com/pub/newlib/newlib-1.20.0.tar.gz
BINUTILS_URL=http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/binutils/binutils-2.22.tar.bz2
 
GCC_FILE=$(basename $GCC_URL)
NEWLIB_FILE=$(basename $NEWLIB_URL)
BINUTILS_FILE=$(basename $BINUTILS_URL)
 
GCC=${GCC_FILE%.tar.*}
BINUTILS=${BINUTILS_FILE%.tar.*}
NEWLIB=${NEWLIB_FILE%.tar.*}
 
 
 
# target
# needed for newlib, because of non-standard PROGRAM_PREFIX.
export CC_FOR_TARGET="$PROGRAM_PREFIX"gcc
export CXX_FOR_TARGET="$PROGRAM_PREFIX"g++
export GCC_FOR_TARGET="$PROGRAM_PREFIX"gcc
export AR_FOR_TARGET="$PROGRAM_PREFIX"ar
export AS_FOR_TARGET="$PROGRAM_PREFIX"as
export LD_FOR_TARGET="$PROGRAM_PREFIX"ld
export NM_FOR_TARGET="$PROGRAM_PREFIX"nm
export RANLIB_FOR_TARGET="$PROGRAM_PREFIX"ranlib
export STRIP_FOR_TARGET="$PROGRAM_PREFIX"strip
 
 
function download()
{
if [ ! -f $1 ]
then
wget -O $1 $2
else
echo "$1 exists"
fi
}
 
function extract()
{
if [ ! -d "$BUILD_DIR/$2" ]
then
tar xf $1 -C $BUILD_DIR
fi
 
if [ ! -d "$BUILD_DIR/$2" ]
then
echo "Failed to extract $2 to $1"
exit 1
fi
}
 
function build()
{
pushd $BUILD_DIR
pushd $1
 
if [ ! -d "build" ]
then
mkdir "build"
pushd "build"
else
pushd "build"
make distclean
fi
 
../configure --target=$TARGET --prefix=/opt/mb-gcc/ --program-prefix=$PROGRAM_PREFIX --prefix=$INSTALL_DIR $2
if [ $? != 0 ]
then
echo "Failed to configure"
exit 1;
fi
env
make -j"$CORES" all$3
if [ $? != 0 ]
then
echo "Failed to build"
exit 1;
fi
make install$3
if [ $? != 0 ]
then
echo "Failed to install"
exit 1;
fi
 
popd
popd
popd
}
 
function gcc_dependencies()
{
 
pushd $BUILD_DIR
pushd $1
./contrib/download_prerequisites
popd
popd
}
 
if [ ! -d $BUILD_DIR ]
then
mkdir $BUILD_DIR
fi
 
if [ ! -d $INSTALL_DIR ]
then
mkdir $INSTALL_DIR
fi
 
 
#download files.
echo "Downloading"
download "$GCC_FILE" "$GCC_URL"
download "$NEWLIB_FILE" "$NEWLIB_URL"
download "$BINUTILS_FILE" "$BINUTILS_URL"
 
echo "Building binutils"
extract "$BINUTILS_FILE" "$BINUTILS"
build $BINUTILS "" ""
 
# put results into PATH.
export PATH=$PATH:$INSTALL_DIR/bin/
 
echo "Building gcc-stage1"
extract "$GCC_FILE" "$GCC"
gcc_dependencies "$GCC"
build $GCC "--enable-languages=c --disable-nls --without-headers --disable-multilib --disable-libssp --with-newlib" "-host"
 
echo "Building newlib"
extract "$NEWLIB_FILE" "$NEWLIB"
build $NEWLIB "" ""
 
 
echo "Building gcc,g++ stage2"
extract "$GCC_FILE" "$GCC"
build $GCC "--enable-languages=c,c++ --disable-nls --without-headers --disable-multilib --disable-libssp --with-newlib" ""

This is a small tool to parse and display statistics from a youless.
See: http://youless.nl/

Download data

Download json file from youless. Do this atleast every 30 minutes.
Overlap is no problem, EnergyPoint will check for this.

wget http://youless/a?f=j -o output.json

Import data

Import download json files:

ep import output.json

This will import the data into ep.sqlite3 database.

Show data

Show graph

ep graph

Add average line and hour bar graph:

ep graph average bars

Print statistics
ep statistics day week

Screenshots:

Code can be found here

Fix a small ‘hick-up’ every 10 seconds for i2c polling of monitor:  (/etc/rc.local)

echo 0 > /sys/module/drm_kms_helper/parameters/poll

Turn off leds: (/etc/rc.local)

echo 0 > /sys/devices/platform/leds-gpio/leds/pandaboard\:\:status1/brightness
echo 0 > /sys/devices/platform/leds-gpio/leds/pandaboard\:\:status2/brightness

Fix screenblanking: (thx to comment in here)

Section "Monitor"
 Identifier "Monitor0"
 Option "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
 Identifier "NoBlankScreen"
 Option "BlankTime" "0"
 Option "StandbyTime" "0"
 Option "SuspendTime" "0"
 Option "OffTime" "0"
EndSection

Then

"

I rebooted my PC (normal reboot)  now gnome-shell uses 100% cpu and hangs,  empathy uses 100% cpu and hangs.. So just ‘randomly’ my desktop became completely un-usable.

So back to the good old openbox+tint2.

A small gnome program that locks your desktop when you walk away from your desk. It is tested with a Sitecom cn-129 Wireless PC Lock.

Requirements:

So what am I working on? well this website (http://compsoc.eu/ ) explains it a bit.