After todays tutoring session we decided not to have the Power Plant display different lighting patterns depending on where in the household different appliances where activated or not.
The reasons for this decisions are the following.
- Households are different. Some households are apartments. They can have one or more rooms. Other households are houses. They can have multiple floors or just one. Mapping the electricity consumption in different floors and rooms to the Power Plant will demand a lot of different and “tailor made” models of the Power Plant.
- Some equipment will always draw electricity. A kitchen will always draw electricity due to the freezer and the fridge. This would result in a specific lighting pattern always being shown on the Power Plant.
- Lack of dimensions. The round shape and the choice of just one color leaves us with only the height for displaying different lighting patterns (for example multiple rows of LEDs from top to bottom on the Power Plant). Mapping lighting patterns to specific appliances in the households means equipping everyone of them with a sensor. It might be possible achieve this by using the Sparzähler Online from Yello Strom, but it is not possible to use it i Sweden yet.
- The goal is still easily reached. The lighting apparatus is still very good for displaying the total electricity consumption in a household.
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[...] Description: During today’s session we ordered the components for building the lighting apparatus. They should arrive on wednesday. Another design choice was made about it and can be found here. [...]