Notices

Hi folks!

BioPower for Nokia N900 is my first ever open source release and also my entry to Maemo.org 2012 coding competition.

BioPower for Nokia N900 is tool to estimate solid bio fuel burner current input power. It listens and visualizes the sound of conveyor detecting the on / off cycles from the conveyor sound. From conveyor on / off cycles the current input power of the burner can be estimated.

See the BioPower web site for more detailed information. Here is the screenshot of main screen:



And here is the demo video on youtube BioPower for Nokia N900 demo in boiler room, which can be found from the web site, too.

Now that I got your interested, you may download and install the .deb package from the BioPower web site or from this direct link: biopower_0.9.0_armel.deb.

Test reports are very welcome - so far I have tested this only by myself. In case you don't happen to have a solid bio fuel burner at hand right now, please test with example sound files that are available at BioPower web site.

Testing is really easy! =) You just need to start BioPower and play the example file for it - you may even use N900 for both of these tasks! Now how cool is that Even better if you just go to boiler room and let BioPower to listen real burner! Pleae allow at least one or two screen full of time for BioPower to turn the bars green - they will eventually and that is when BioPower think it has a good estimate of the burners current input power at bottom of the screen. Keeping the other backgorund noise at minimum helps BioPower in its task.

And hey, if you happen to have a solid bio fuel burner, I would be happy if you could record example sound files of your burner normal operation sound and post the download link here for testing. You may also send files to my gmail account by email (see the web site for address).

That's almost all now folks! Just one more thing:

BioPower is based on Roman Morawek's BabyPhone, so thanks a lot for Roman! BabyPhone had a audio sampling already implemented, so I could consentrate to actual BioPower functionality. BioPower would not probably exist without Roman's work on BabyPhone, which I really appreciate a lot! This is the beauty of FOSS.

Thank's for reading this long announce and have fun!

Some FAQ-torials

Q: Why it takes so long to get BioPower show green bars?
A: BioPower maintains the quality of the power estimation by averaging three last valid estimates. Estimates are calculated from conveyor rest / feed cycles. The rest / feed cycles must not be more than 20% off from the value Settings -> Typical period time. If rest / feed period is too long or too short, BioPower will turn bars red. The bars are green and estimate is valid after three consecutive valid length conveyor cycles.

Hey jukra, I was thinking about your application earlier when I seen it on the competition wiki. I'm glad you're still entering, remember to submit your application before the deadline on Sunday!

It's a very unusual application but very interesting. Unfortunately I don't have a solid bio fuel burner, but I must admit you have me curious about them from the description. I'll definitely check out your app using the sound files though

Ok, the entry has now been completed by email.

I must admit, that BioPower might be just a little bit in marginal as an application I wonder how many N900 users are also using solid bio fuel burners to keep their house warm and wondering what is the current power of burner

Well any way, being a marginal is not the point. The 1st point is that I had a problem (to estimate the burner power), that is now solved nicely with piece of modern technology and some self-made digi-crafting.

The competition gave the last kick to get started with implementation of BioPower. The idea has been in my mind for a while, but probably the problem did not bother me enough to get started with implementation.

The 2nd point is that as a long time Linux and other FOSS user I have been dreaming to give back something to community. This is now done as well and I am happy about it. And for me these two things are the most important things in BioPower.

Ok, folks sorry about off-topic. Please post any BioPower related questions and user experiences here. I'll try to be supportive author from now on

Please take a look at the small youtube video, that I made to demonstrate BioPower in action at the boiler room. It is called BioPower for Nokia N900 demo in boiler room. The video and the link are available at the BioPower web site and the link also in the first post of this thread.

Enjoy the video!