3/30/11-Day Twenty-three

Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
		March 30th		April 1st (Tennis center)
	April 5th (Tennis center)		April 7th (RFID)
April 11th (RFID)		April 13th (Tennis Center)		April 15th (Tennis center)
	April 19th (RFID)		April 21st (RFID)
April 25th (Tennis Center)		April 27th (RFID)		April 29th PORTFOLIO DUE
	May 3rd		May 5th
May 9th		May 11th		May 13th

Today, we started off Green Tech class by going over the rest of the year. Dr. Bill talked to us about what we were going to be working on this quarter and he also went over out final project. Our final project is going to be a portfolio, probably built on iweb, on what we have been doing this semester. This chart above is a rough schedule on how we (me and possibly Awe) are going to spend the little classes we have left. Because we are both very interested on working on the audimation system in the tennis center, but we want to continue working on RFID, we split the class periods between the two projects and we are going to start coming in at xblocks to work on them. After Dr. Bill went over the school year, we went over the groups individual projects.

The tennis center takes up 10% of the schools energy. Each light bulb is 10,000 watts and it cost $17 an hour and about $170 a day to keep the tennis courts lit. Dr. Bill recently put sensors up in the tennis center to track the amount of energy that is being used, and when it is being used. These lights totally power down from 10pm till 7am. During these ours it is impossible to turn on the lights in the tennis center. In the graph to the right, you can see the hours 10pm-7am because there is no spike in electricity being used. Every spike in this graph is someone coming in the tennis center and turing the lights on. What the school is trying to do is clean up the sky light in the tennis center so the lights don't have to be used during the day. We are also trying to put solar panels on the roof of the tennis center so the courts can have its own source of electricity and we are planning to put in better light bulbs that use less electricity. My job in this project would be to keep track of the money and electricity HPA is saving. I would record all of it and have an account on elab.hpa.edu so I could follow the energy being used in the tennis center. We are also going to put these sensors in G-pack. This is something that I am really interested in and I can't wait to get started on. Over 5000 schools are trying to get done what we are currently accomplishing and I am excited to be one of the first working on it.

RFID:

This quarter, me and Awe plan to get serious about working on the RFID project. This last quarter was mostly about getting the idea together and getting familiar with different programs, but now we want to actually get everything started. Our goals for this semester with this project is, first, getting the RFID board working wirelessly, second, getting the motor running using the 5v output on the reader, third, get the bento data base working the the system, and lastly, learning how to program it and setting it up in the energy lab. Tonight, I am going to do some research on programing on cprograming.com. This will give me an overview of c++ programing, and I have already started looking into it. Also, before next class, I am going to work on getting bento linked to the the RFID kit.

Because we have two major projects, Awe and I realize it is going to take extra work. Like I said before, we plan to come in frequently during time to work on these projects so we have at least a base before summer.