READY Tutorial
From Clarity Wiki
This tutorial will describe how to install and use the beta version of appliance recognition.
Contents |
Requirements
This page provides guidelines of the installation of READY v.1 (previously named REAR)
The system requires:
A full installation of the Episensor data acquisition system, which is currently based only on Windows OS. An Episensor USB gateway An Episensor Energy monitor
Episensor equipment can be bought directly from the Episensor website
Instructions for the Episensor system installation
Once the Episensor software is installed, you can test the installation by clipping the energy monitor to the live wire of the home fuse box and the USB gateway to your PC/laptop.
The Episensor Net Controller console allows checking the state of your energy monitor and the real-time data collection.
You are now ready to install the READY system.
The READY System
Click here to download the zip file.
To run the program, first, you need to create a folder and unzip the file into that folder. To run the program simply click on Rear.jar; alternatively, open up a console (e.g Start>>Run>>cmd.exe), go into the folder created and a type: "java -jar Rear.jar".
Setting
At start-up, the program requires some information about your Episensor installation. READY provides default settings to connect to the remote CLARITY server at [http:www.ucd.ie University College Dublin]. Alternatively, you can run READY locally by using the Episensor database installed on your machine. This requires changing the READY settings to your Local Episensor database configuration. Note that the READY settings are the same settings used for the Episensor Net manager installation.
Machine name: The local name or address of the database. To connect to a local database, you can have your host name by writing ipconfig /all on a console, then write \SQLEXPRESS at the end. To connect to a remote database (e.g. UCD server) you need to write the IP address of the database.
Database Name: The name of the database you have created during the installation of Episensor software.
Sensor ID: The ID of your energy monitor can be found in the Net Manager: Right-Click on the energy monitor installed to display the properties. The energy monitor ID should look like 000D6F000041E61D8.
Username : The username given when the database has been created (Episensor default "sa")
Password: Your database password
Click OK to save this settings. The system will save these values for further connections.
The READY system consists of two main parts: the appliance profiling and the actual appliance recognition. During the appliance profiling, the user is guided through the profiling of the local appliances and the training of the neural network used to recognise appliances in real-time. In the appliance recognition, a dashboard allows highlighting the appliances in use in real-time and checking the € cost per appliance.
Appliance Profiling
The appliance profiling consists of three simple panels to guide the user through adding a new appliance, build a unique appliance signature and train the system.
Add appliances
Following is a screenshot of the "Add appliance" panel. Appliances to be profiled should be added by choosing a name and a picture(optional).
The right-hand side of the "Add Appliance" panel shows a default list of appliance types. The panel allows adding a new appliance or searching for an existing one. You can select "other" if you do not find the appliance type in the list. Once the type is selected, write the name of your appliance (e.g. "Kettle", "Kettle_kitchen_brand") For a better visualisation, you can add a picture of your appliance. The system will automatically resize it to a 80*80 icon. If you do not add a picture, the appliance will be represented by a question mark. Click "save" or "save and go to next step" buttons to save the new appliance added. Note that by clicking the "record values" button will bring you to the next panel without save the appliance entered.
Record Values
The READY system needs to build a unique signal for each appliance. We call it “Unique Appliance Signature” (UAS). The panel “Record values” guides the user through the creation of a UAS for the new appliance. Below is a screenshot of the "Record values" panel.
Firstly, you have to select the appliance you would to profile. Suppose you have just added and saved a new appliance, the field "Name" will be already filled with the appliance name.
Click "Start Recording". The button will then display "when you are ready to profile your appliance, click here" and the graph window in the panel will start displaying real-time consumption. Click the button before switching on the appliance.
At this stage the button turns into red colour and the appliance signature development is in progress. You can now turn on the appliance. READY needs at least 3 signals from teh energy monitor and currently, EPISENSOR provides a maximum data rate of 1 packet per minute, so be patient.
The button will turn green at the end of the profiling. Save this pattern. Note: Three displayed values are enough to build an accurate appliance signature for most of the appliances. However, certain appliances may have high consumption variance during their activity (e.g. a washing machine). If this is the case, then you can build a more accurate signature by keeping the profiling active for a longer period. The more the values stored the higher the system accuracy.
The ideal signature is achieved when no other appliances are turned on during profiling. READY is resilient to small spikes during profiling, however, if the signature has a steep spike due to a sudden activity of another high consuming appliance you can start another record.
Switch off your appliance, click on the button "Start another record" and follow the previous instructions. Same procedure to start another record for other appliances: select the correct appliance in the list and follow the previous instruction.
Possible issues:
2 minutes are passed and no values are displayed. Probably this is a connection problem. The different possibilities are: - Wrong settings entered in the first window, verify the machine name, sensor ID and password. - In case the access is done remotely, check if the Firewall is not blocking the port 1433. - No new values are coming to the database. This may be an Episensor issue. Check if new values are collected by using the net manager.
Once all appliances are profiled, you are ready to train the system.
Train the system
The figure below shows the "Train System" panel.
The left-hand side of the panel shows a list of the added appliances. If some of those appliances have not been trained or if you simply want to remove any, click on the corresponding name, tick the box (security step) and click the "remove" button.
When you are satisfied with the list of appliances to use for training the system, you can start the learning step. Click the "Start Learning" button and wait during few minutes (can vary with your computer speed, the quantity of appliances and the difficulty to classify them). At the end of the training period the system report an accurate estimation of the accuracy that the system will achieve. If you are not satisfied by the final accuracy you can improve the accuracy by running the learning step several times. However, after few retrials, the accuracy will stop increasing and the system is probably at its best.
Click on the "Appliance Recognition" button at the bottom-right to activate the appliance dashboard.
Appliance Recognition
After the appliance profiling and the training, the appliance recognition allows the user checking the activity of appliances in real-time.
The profiling is a one-off procedure. After that, READY uses a machine learning technique to understand the appliance activity in real-time. Once READY is trained, you can run and stop the appliance recognition directly by clicking on "appliance recognition".
An appliance dashboard will display the appliances activity and € cost. A grey background of an appliance indicates that the appliance is inactive. A green background of an appliance indicates it is "Active". By dragging the mouse onto an appliance the activity time and € cost is shown.
Statistics: In its current state Rear is a beta version, therefore the first CLARITY deployment will be used to estimate the system accuracy. We are asking participants to provide sporadic statistics about correct/wrong recognition. The statistics are collected automatically while the system is running. If you turn-on the heater and the system consider the kettle is ON, click on the kettle icon and then click on the button "Wrong" as shown in the picture below. This will build a statistics file, which will be used for a first evaluation of the READY.
