HOME ABASI MARGARET JOSEPH GROUP_MEDIA
Hello there, welcome to my final year project blog page. |
| Komuntu Oscar |
CONCEPT PAPER:
Born in the western part of Uganda, the card-less instant payment idea
came to me as no surprise since i have witnessed the current payment
systems in the area. I then started my research as early as 15th of July
2014 when i had a chat with one Charles who works as an accountant with
BECS, an Electricity supply and vending company operating in the
western Uganda. He emphasised that such a solution is required as it
will make life more easy for the clients as well as ensure high rates of
return to the companies that undertake it.
We met as a
group and we generated two ideas but this idea went ahead of the other
not only because its feasibility study was complete but also because of
our strong Physics and Mathematics background. My group mates all agreed
on this in unison.
I was tasked to generate a suitable problem statement for the concept note and i chose to state that "The project is geared towards creating instant
access to electricity as long as the client has made a payment through the
mobile system. The magnetic cards which have been used as the only way to load
units to the meters are supposed to be suppressed by this project. Therefore
clients will only require a simple GSM enabled mobile phone and our networked
meters. Tracking their payment statistical information and history has also
been much of paper work thus this project also ensures access to digital
payment statistics (history) through the client’s phone."
PROJECT PROPOSAL
The proposal was our next in the list of project milestones. i downloaded the template and forwarded it the rest of the group members to get an overview of what to expect. I then scheduled a meeting from which we where to discuss the different chapters of the proposal as well as drafting it.
We met our supervisor on the next Monday and he made changes to the document. I then took charge of the changes since i had a better view of the requirements. I scheduled another meeting with the group and told them about the changes. We then did the rest of the document that included a discussion on various IEEE referencing techniques.
REQUIREMENTS COLLECTION
I drafted a questionnaire for the technician at the company which is our case study and sent them for answering. The copy should be in the media page of our blog as soon as possible. The questionnaire was answered alongside others for other system stakeholders.
REQUIREMENTS DOCUMENT:
I downloaded the template for the software requirements document from here (cit projects page) and sent it to the rest of the team through email.
We gathered the requirements through questionnaires and started work on the document. The system requirements where obtained from the technical responses from the technicians and manager questionnaires whereas the user requirements where obtained from the responses from the various users that answered the questionnaires.
DESIGN DOCUMENT:
The card-less Instant Power project design document can be found in the group media page link of this blog. However, this document is one of the most crucial documents in in the development of a software system.
As a group each member was assigned a specific part to draft so that they can be compiled into one document. Personally, i was tasked with with section 5, 6 (Component Design and Human Interface Design respectively) and some parts of section 3 and 4 (System Architecture and Data Design respectively).
Under component design, i came up with an algorithm implemented in pseudo code regarding how each component of the card-less instant electricity payment system goes about its functionality. For example.
Listening to requests:
Check whether COM port specified is
available.
While true
Wait
for incoming SMS data through the port
If new sms is available
Parse
through the SMS text for specific digits and words to find the SMS intent
Print
out the output
Else
Wait longer for sms
Under Human Interface Design, i had to come up with a representation of how the interface will look like to the end users of the system. i used a number of tools to create these representations such as Microsoft Visio, Eclipse window buider among others. a representation of this is as shown in the image below;
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| The third party mobile money service |
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| The back-end admin interface prototype created with Eclipse GUI builder |
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| Mock-up depicting the liquid crystal display |
the card-less instant electricity payment system is a distributed system containing a desktop server connected to an embedded system that makes up the electric meter.
Implementation phase is geared towards making the two distinct major components communicate over a GSM network through the Short Messaging Service (sms) by exchanging sms messages with each other.
Thus, the server component shall be implemented in Java Programming language whereas the Meter's micro-controller shall host a sketch programmed in a Processing, a C language variant that is the official language for Arduino platform projects.
Beginning the 2nd of May 2015, I created a swing based application in java using Net Beans that is meant to act as the support software for the system. it provides ability to add a customer to the database, edit the user's information such as meter number, delete a given customer from the system ad also provides control to the sms server. It displays the state of the server plus the ability to put the server in offline or online mode.
A sample of this interface is previewed in the screen mockup below;
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| The back-end admin interface created with Net Beans GUI builder |
The various components which were purchased needed to be assembled together following a circuit to help us attain the functionality of a normal electric meter. I placed the GSM module directly into the micro-controller and then used the replicated pins of the module to wire the rest of the circuit. I then used a breadboard to extend the circiut and the pins that are shared such as the GND and the 5V pins.
A current sensor was required next and this along with its circuitry was placed to interface with the A0 analog pin of Arduino. The power to the mains supply was bypassed so that the live wire from the relay switch together with the bypassed live wire from the sensor can complete the circuit that we needed to load with domestic electricity aapliances.
Together with other group members, we then came up with the sketch that had libraries such as GSM library, LCD library and the EEPROM library and uploaded it to the Arduino through a USB cable.
A structured SMS message was send to the GSM module and was received and displayed the number of units purchased on the LCD.
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| The components assembled together to make up an electricity meter |
THE REPORT:
the software report is written with various sections for which i undertook sections that had to do with implementation, installation and some parts containing the testing of the Card-less instant electricity payment system.
Resources such as the report can be accessed through the media page of the blog.
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