Playing at work

One of my responsibilities at work is the overall management of our data acquisition and monitoring activities. Another engineer, Dave, does most of the actual work these days, but I get to play with the parts and pieces as much as I can find time to. We're transitioning to a new server and ultimately a database for our data collection and needed an in-house logger to test out the new system. Dave set up a logger in an enclosure, and I got to program it as well as play around with modifying one of the bazillion old UPS's lying around the office.

These uninterruptable power supplies are basically a charge controller for a 12V sealed lead acid battery and a somewhat crude inverter to supply AC current to the load (computer, etc) when the power goes down. The UPS's that have been pulled out of commission in the office are almost 100% due to the batteries having died and not the electronics. The loggers we use (Campbell Scientific CR10X or CR1000) also use a 12V battery and don't draw much power. So, I jumpered off the battery in the UPS to power the datalogger. The logger has been running for the better part of a week now and hasn't caught on fire. That's a good sign, right? :)

Modified UPS:

The datalogger cave:

Stuck up in the attic

Most of my time on this project in Las Vegas has been perched at the top of a ladder with my head in one of the six access hatches to the mini-split A/C units in the portion of the house we're monitoring. These six units only condition about 20% of the house. It's such a huge building, we're only looking at part of it for our research goals at this point. This image is pretty much what I can see from each access panel. The foam is sprayed-in insulation on the roof deck. It makes the envelope of the house much more airtight and provides good insulation. It's a little more expensive than fiberglass or other traditional methods, but has a lot of extra benefits.

Dave's OSHA compliance

This is Dave on the job yesterday. I wish I could say standing at the top of a ladder, working with our heads in a hole wasn't all that common... We've asked the builder for a taller ladder for when we get to the site today.

Electrical End-Use Disaggregation

It was a fun, albeit geeky way to spend the morning, but I met a friend at Carnegie Mellon to hear about his research project. He and his colleague have built a system to disaggregate power and events of various electrical end uses on the same circuit. This isn't really all that new of a concept. Several products and/or projects have existed before. I think some of their tools are new and improved. This is only a step in the larger project they are working on. I don't know if it's public yet, so I cannot really say any more about it. I do hope that my company's lab home and other monitored projects may be a good test bed for their system. Although, at the current rate, they will be out of grad school before our lab home has a real occupant. The first two years will see it as an unoccupied test bed.