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Development

The OpenEnergyMonitor project

The OpenEnergyMonitor project is based on the work of two developers, Trystan Lea and Suneil, both from Wales. "This is a project to develop and build open source energy monitoring and analysis tools for energy efficiency and distributed renewable microgeneration." The project appears to have been launched in the summer of 2009.

The OpenEnergyMonitor project's graphic [PDF] describes the goals, which include:

  • Monitoring AC mains for energy analysis purposes.
  • Energy prediction for renewable energy feasibility studies (Planned).
  • Monitoring energy captured from wind, solar water and photovoltaic sources.
  • Storage, analysis and display of energy usage data.
  • Development of energy technologies.
  • The export of energy usage information to the Internet (Planned).

The OpenEnergyMonitor site lists several example projects:

OpenEnergyMonitor features a simple structure that is built from a variety of open-source hardware and software components. The data flow through the system starts with an Arduino processor and a custom built I/O shield for interfacing the analog signal to the Arduino. The Arduino sends data to the host computer via a USB serial connection.

The project provides several ways to collect and display the power data. The simpler batch mode works as follows: The ArduinoComm Java program can be used to copy a batch of recorded data to a file using a command such as: 

    $ java ArduinoComm >tmp.dat
Graphing of the captured data can be done with the KDE utility kst, see the Using KST for graphing document for details.

A more interactive real time display can be achived using the PowerLogger and PowerSampler Java programs. A test installation of both programs was performed on an Ubuntu 9.04 system. The OpenEnergyMonitor java software guide was followed. Each program requires installation of the associated Arduino program (sketch) on the Arduino board. Your author had several Arduino Deicimila boards around from other projects and an already installed version 17 of the Arduino IDE. The Arduino Power Logger program (sketch) was retrieved, compiled and installed on the Deicimila board without any problems.

Next, Java was installed on the machine along with the RXTX serial/parallel communication library. The Java code was compiled and run with the java ContinuousPower command. The ContinuousPower GUI showed up and after clicking on the Start button, the Arduino status indicated that a connection was established and an a flow of data was seen from the Arduino board. The real time graph's X axis changed with advancing time and the data changed slightly due to noise. Unfortunately, your author did not have the parts on hand to construct an input shield board, so monitoring of some real data was not possible. The PowerSampler program was compiled and installed with similar results.

For more information on the inner workings of the Java software, see the Power Logger Source Code Guide and the Program Structure and Data Flow Diagram. The latter explains both the Power Logger and Power Sampler Java programs since both share a large percentage of source code.

OpenEnergyMonitor is an interesting project in the early stages of development. It comes along at a time when the renewable energy field is seeing a lot of growth, and efficiency monitoring of non-renewable sources is becoming more important for both financial and ecological reasons. Hopefully, future releases of OpenEnergyMonitor will include a wider variety of supported sensor devices. A multi-channel temperature monitor would be useful for characterizing a variety of solar energy sources such as photovoltaic, hydronic (hot water) and solar-heated air panels.

The OpenEnergyMonitor project could also be useful for providing a base of working code for a more generic Arduino-based data logger, and the real-time data visualization capabilities are an added bonus. A thread on the Arduino forum about an Open Source Data Logger Project Using the Arduino indicates some potential interest, but that project apparently never got off the ground.

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System Applications

Audio Projects

ALSA 1.0.21 released

Version 1.0.21 of the ALSA audio server has been announced, see the change log for details.

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MPD 0.15.3 released

Version 0.15.3 of MPD, a server-side application for playing music, has been announced. "Improves update speed and fixes an audio stuttering bug."

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Database Software

PostgreSQL Weekly News

The August 30, 2009 edition of the PostgreSQL Weekly News is online with the latest PostgreSQL DBMS articles and resources.

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Networking Tools

RunPON 0.4 released

Version 0.4 of RunPON has been announced. "In this version: introduced a .INI configuration file and a GUI to handle it. Morevover, it's possible to keep track of the cumulative connection time. RunPON is a small Python program useful to run the pon/poff scripts. It shows the elapsed connection time and periodically checks if a given network interface is still active."

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Printing

CUPS 1.4.0 released

Version 1.4.0 of the CUPS printing system has been announced. "CUPS 1.4.0 adds over 67 changes and new features to CUPS 1.3.11, including improved Bonjour/DNS-SD support, supply level and status reporting for network printers via SNMP, an improved web interface, and the CUPS DDK tools."

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Desktop Applications

Accessibility

Alt_Key 2.2.1 released

Version 2.2.1 of Alt_Key has been announced. "Alt_Key is a GUI program that shows where keyboard accelerators should go in menu option texts and dialog labels. The program instantly produces optimal results on the basis that the best accelerator is the first character, the second best is the first character of a word, the third best is any character, the worst is no accelerator at all, and no accelerator should be used more than once. With this program developers can help improve usability for users who can't use the mouse and for fast typists who don't want to use the mouse."

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Audio Applications

Audacity 1.3.9 beta released

Beta version 1.3.9 of the Audacity audio editor has been announced. "It contains many bug fixes contributed by our two Google Summer of Code (GSoC) 2009 students, and brings us much closer to the goal of a new Stable 2.0 release."

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QARecord 0.5.0 released

Version 0.5.0 of QARecord has been announced, it adds a number of new capabilities. "QARecord is a simple but solid recording tool. It works well with stereo and multichannel recordings, supporting ALSA and JACK interfaces and in both 16 bit and 32 bit mode. By using a large ringbuffer for the captured data, buffer overruns are avoided. It has a Qt based GUI with graphical peak meters."

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Desktop Environments

GNOME Software Announcements

The following new GNOME software has been announced this week: You can find more new GNOME software releases at gnomefiles.org.

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KDE 4.3.1 provides a wave of improvements

Version 4.3.1 of KDE has been announced. "A month has passed since the release of KDE 4.3.0, so today the KDE Community announces the immediate availability of KDE 4.3.1, a bugfix, translation and maintenance update for the latest generation of the most advanced and powerful free desktop."

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KDE Software Announcements

The following new KDE software has been announced this week: You can find more new KDE software releases at kde-apps.org.

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Xorg Software Announcements

The following new Xorg software has been announced this week: More information can be found on the X.Org Foundation wiki.

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Electronics

gEDA/gaf 1.5.4-20090830 released

Unstable development snapshot 1.5.4-20090830 of gEDA/gaf, a collection of electronic design and analysys tools, has been announced. "gEDA/gaf v1.5.3 had some release critical bugs (DOA) so it has been withdrawn and is no longer available for download. Please download, build, and run gEDA/gaf v1.5.4."

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TimingAnalyzer 0.932 beta released

Version 0.932 beta of TimingAnalyzer is available with a bug fix. "The TimingAnalyzer can be used to easily draw timing diagrams and perform timing analysis to find faults in digital systems. The diagrams can be saved in many different image file formats and scalable vector formats so they can easily be added to documentation. With Python scripts, the user can draw large complex timing diagrams quickly, generate test vectors and testbenches for analog and digital simulations, and add new features to the program. Written in Java, it runs on any platform that supports the Java Run-time Environment (JRE1.6.0) or Java Development Kit JDK1.6.0 or newer."

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Encryption Software

M2Crypto 0.20.1 released

Version 0.20.1 of M2Crypto has been announced, it includes a bug fix. "M2Crypto is the most complete Python wrapper for OpenSSL featuring RSA, DSA, DH, HMACs, message digests, symmetric ciphers (including AES); SSL functionality to implement clients and servers; HTTPS extensions to Python's httplib, urllib, and xmlrpclib; unforgeable HMAC'ing AuthCookies for web session management; FTP/TLS client and server; S/MIME; ZServerSSL: A HTTPS server for Zope and ZSmime: An S/MIME messenger for Zope. Smartcards supported with the Engine interface."

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Financial Applications

Gnucash 2.3.5 released

Version 2.3.5 of Gnucash has been announced. "The GnuCash development team proudly announces GnuCash 2.3.5, the sixth of several unstable 2.3.x releases of the GnuCash Free Accounting Software which will eventually lead to the stable version 2.4.0. With this new release series, GnuCash can use an SQL database using SQLite3, MySQL or PostgreSQL. It runs on GNU/Linux, *BSD, Solaris, Microsoft Windows and Mac OSX. This release is intended for developers and testers who want to help tracking down all those bugs that are still in there."

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Music Applications

Ardour MIDI editing sneak preview

A sneak preview of the upcoming Ardour MIDI editing capability has been announced. "Ardour 3 is still not ready for testing by non-developing users, but I wanted to provide a preview of the way the "inline" MIDI editing system is taking shape, and to provide a record of key- and mouse-bindings for future manual writers."

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aseqmm 0.1.0 released

Version 0.1.0 of aseqmm has been announced. "aseqmm is a C++ wrapper around the ALSA library sequencer interface using Qt4 objects, idioms and style. ALSA sequencer provides software support for MIDI technology on Linux. This is the first public release of aseqmm."

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Office Suites

OpenOffice.org 3.1.1 is available

Version 3.1.1 of OpenOffice.org has been announced. "Full details of the bugs fixed may be found in the release notes. Details of the security vulnerabilities fixed will be published in our security bulletin on September 11th when the standard public disclosure embargo expires. To our knowledge, none of these vulnerabilities has been exploited; however, in accordance with industry best practice, we recommend all users of earlier versions to upgrade to 3.1.1."

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Miscellaneous

BleachBit 0.6.3 released

Version 0.6.3 of BleachBit has been announced. "BleachBit trace files to maintain your privacy and deletes junk to recover disk space. Notable changes for 0.6.1: * Clear unused inode data on ext3 and ext4 (and try on other file systems) to hide the metadata (filename, file size, date) of previously deleted files * Delete Windows system logs * Update 18 translations".

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IMDbPY 4.2 released

Version 4.2 of IMDbPY has been announced. "IMDbPY is a Python package useful to retrieve and manage the data of the IMDb movie database about movies, people, characters and companies. With this release, a lot of bugs were fixed, and some minor new features introduced."

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Languages and Tools

C

GCC 4.4.2 Status Report

The September 1, 2009 edition of the GCC 4.4.2 Status Report has been published. "The 4.4 branch is open for commits under the usual release branch rules. The timing of the 4.4.2 release (at least two months after the 4.4.1 release, so no sooner than September 22) at a point when there are no P1 regressions open for the branch) has yet to be determined."

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LLVM 2.6 pre-1 released

Version 2.6 pre-1 of LLVM, the Low Level Virtual Machine Compiler Infrastructure, has been announced. "2.6 pre-release1 is ready to be tested by the community. You will notice that we have quite a few pre-compiled binaries (of both clang and llvm-gcc). We have identified several bugs that will be fixed in pre-release2, so please search the bug database before filing a new bug. If you have time, I'd appreciate anyone who can help test the release."

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Caml

Caml Weekly News

The September 1, 2009 edition of the Caml Weekly News is out with new articles about the Caml language.

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Python

cssutils 0.9.6b5 released

Version 0.9.6b5 of cssutils has been announced, it is a bug fix release. "what is it? A Python package to parse and build CSS Cascading Style Sheets. (Not a renderer though!)"

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Jython 2.5.1 release candidate 1 is out

Release candidate 1 of Jython 2.5.1, an implementation of Python in Java, has been released. "Jython 2.5.1rc1 fixes a number of bugs, including some major errors when using coroutines and when using relative imports."

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pylib/py.test 1.0.2 released

Version 1.0.2 of pylib/py.test has been announced. "i just pushed a pylib/py.test 1.0.2 maintenance release, fixing several issues triggered by fedora packaging. Also added a link to the new pytest_django plugin, a changelog and some other improvements."

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pylint 0.18.1 / astng 0.19.1 released

Version 0.18.1 of pylint and version 0.19.1 of astng have been announced, both include bug fixes. Pylint: "analyzes Python source code looking for bugs and signs of poor quality."

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PyYAML 3.09 released

Version 3.09 of PyYAML, a YAML parser and emitter for Python, has been announced, it includes a number of bug fixes.

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Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links

The September 2, 2009 edition of the Python-URL! is online with a new collection of Python article links.

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Tcl/Tk

Tcl-URL! - weekly Tcl news and links

The August 27, 2009 edition of the Tcl-URL! is online with new Tcl/Tk articles and resources.

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Version Control

GIT 1.6.4.2 released

Version 1.6.4.2 of the GIT distributed version control system has been announced, it includes several bug fixes and documentation updates.

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vadm 0.6.0 released

Version 0.6.0 of vadm has been announced. "i just uploaded vadm-0.6.0 to PyPI: a svn-like command line tool for non-intrusively versioning posix files and ownership information."

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