Blog and Labs

Most organisations using ECM will generally have fleet vehicles assigned to one specific site (or cost centre) and will rarely have the need to move vehicles multiple times. However, one of our larger clients is a construction company operating over 200 active sites and given the nature of construction, people can be moving between sites and re-assigned to different cost centres on a regular basis.

Find the vehicle that has moved to a different cost centre:

Now simply edit the registration number of the vehicle to something else. For ease of view, it might be useful to add the date of change (highlighted in red); "CB7VEP to 03/08/2011". However, it can be edited to anything else; for example "CB7VEP Moved".

Once the vehicle is edited, the original vehicle will re-appear when you next import your fuel card data. That vehicle will appear again as un-assigned, allowing you to re-assign it to one of your cost centres:

If you have any questions about fuel card imports, or any other aspect of ECM, please contact a member of our support staff: support@carboncalculated.com

Last Monday was a bank holiday here in the UK, and while most people were playing computer games or out socialising, our CTO, Richard, was starting to truly think with portals. After releasing a ruby wrapper for the Pachube TCP stream API, Richard decided to build a Node.js streaming TCP client for Pachube's TCP server.

Node.js is an event-driven I/O framework for server-side JavaScript, but what does this mean and what does it allow us to do? Well, it essentially allows us to open up portals between events, allowing us to listen for information, rather than asking for it via the web:

Combining this with the Pachube TCP stream API enables us to extend this to real-world devices, creating portals for data to stream through to our software. What are we doing with these portals and this data?...You'll just have to wait and see ;-)

We have of course released the code for this client via the Carbon Calculated Github account; feel free to fork, commit or comment.

We have just released a gem (Ruby plugin) which uses the new beta Pachube TCP stream using Eventmachine.

The Gem is available on the Carbon Calculated github here: https://github.com/carboncalculated/pachube-stream

Pachube allows you to manage and sensor realtime data such as electricity, and have recently partnered with CurrentCost acting as the data store for the CurrentCost web bridge.

Our gem allows a Ruby developer to access their own or publically available data streams from pachube and consume the data inside their own applications. Here at CarbonCalculated we are using the Pachube Stream gem to enable realtime monitoring of electricity, gas and water consumption and related carbon emissions across our range of products. This means there is no longer a need to import gas, electricty or water bills, simply fit a web enabled meter and add the readings from the device straight into your companies carbon footprint!

To get started with the gem, read the documentation on github and have a look at the examples here: https://github.com/carboncalculated/pachube-stream/tree/master/examples

The pachube gem is open source and therefore pull requests are very much welcome!

We at Carbon Calculated always look at the advances in technology and how we can use them for developing new application for carbon calculation.

We have been experimenting with Sproutcore (Javascript MVC framework) recently and have knocked up a quick example application:

Electricity Carbon Calculator example app

and the code for this is open source and availble here:

https://github.com/carboncalculated/electric-bill-carbon-calculator-sproutcore

This shows how quick and easy Sproutcore and the Carbon Calculated API are to use.

The Carbon Calculated ECM (Enterprise Carbon Management) software allows realtime monitoring of your energy usage from a variety of monitoring appliances. Today we recieved the brand new Current Cost EnviR energy monitors for testing and so we can add them to the list of supported devices for ECM.

Here at Carbon Calculated we are quite excited about the new release of the EnviR monitors as they are priced at a level which is affordable to hook up entire organisational supplies, can hook into a ethernet bridge so direct transmission to the ECM system as well as the advent of a new LED monitor which is more accurate than the clamps.

We have been told by the guys at Current Cost that they will be introducing both water and gas usage shorty to work wth the EnviR, as well as multi-input support to web meaning that you will be able to hook up multiple meters to the base and transmit them all from the same base straight into your site on ECM.

A new version of the browser has been released; we now handle displaying the source information ourselves via a content management system;

We have also updated the browser to indicate a link to our QA applications; As we are a firm believer in transparent data and calculations; anyone can verify and question the results that are gained from our platform, a true open source data provider for carbon calculations!!…. Yes thats what we are!

We have just release first in a series of open source applications to help developers get a better understanding of the carbon calculated platform.

Rails3

The application is in Rails3 and uses the calculated gem

Application

You can find the application here

Gem

You can find the gem here

Just thought I would give a quick outline of the features that we released form day 1 of the platforms release; and also the power of having validations at the CORE of our calculators; and what this means to developers.

Greenhouse gases

From the first release of the API we have supported other Greenhouse gases (CH4, N20, CO2E, indirect CO2E, direct CO2E, direct CO2, indirect CO2) besides CO2.

This can be shown here on the browser

This rich calculation information can really help if you need to build an application for the CDP (carbon disclosure project) for instance

Information When Calculating

When you ask for a result from the platform it well tell you what is used in its calculation; This enables the developer to use these results for all kinds of possibilities. To Show a quick example of this lets get an emission result for traveling by plane from Heathrow to JFK

Path

/calculators/4bab7e17f78b122cdd000001/answer.json?api_key=your_api_key&transport_type=4bd5cb38dfde7b12560033db&transport=4bd5cb39dfde7b12560033ff&no_of_journeys=1&no_of_people=1&formula_input_name=per_passenger_km&origin=4b83f9af0e61b2220d00538d&destination=4b83f9db0e61b2220d005faa

If you do not understand this request please look at the API documentation; however going to the browser may help to understand the parameters that will be sent

This request returns the following result

{"calculations":{"co2":{"value":681.049338,"units":"kg"},"n2o":{"value":6.676954,"units":"kg CO2e"},"ch4":{"value":0.0607,"units":"kg CO2e"},"co2e":{"value":687.786992,"units":"kg"}},"answer_set_id":"4bd5cb3bdfde7b125600377f","source":{"id":"4ca48e57fd516d1b5b000014","description":"","main_source_ids":["4bebea80dfde7b477d000008"],"external_url":"http://miniapps.carboncalculated.com/journey/calculation/answers/new","wave_id":"me9YDh_mC"},"calculator_id":"4bab7e17f78b122cdd000001","computation_id":"4bcc683e1076f1533f000001","object_references":{"4b83f9af0e61b2220d00538d":{"id":"4b83f9af0e61b2220d00538d","template_name":"airport","characteristics":[{"attribute":"label","value":"United Kingdom, London - LGW","units":null,"value_type":"String","id":null},{"attribute":"airport_name","value":"London - LGW","units":null,"value_type":"String","id":null},{"attribute":"latitude","value":"51.15","units":null,"value_type":"Float","id":null},{"attribute":"longitude","value":"-0.19","units":null,"value_type":"Float","id":null},{"attribute":"iata_code","value":"LGW","units":null,"value_type":"String","id":null},{"attribute":"airport","value":"Gatwick","units":null,"value_type":"String","id":null},{"attribute":"country","value":"United Kingdom","units":null,"value_type":"String","id":null}],"formula_inputs":[],"identifier":"United Kingdom, London - LGW - Gatwick"},"4b83f9db0e61b2220d005faa":{"id":"4b83f9db0e61b2220d005faa","template_name":"airport","characteristics":[{"attribute":"label","value":"United States, New York - JFK","units":null,"value_type":"String","id":null},{"attribute":"airport_name","value":"New York - JFK","units":null,"value_type":"String","id":null},{"attribute":"latitude","value":"40.64","units":null,"value_type":"Float","id":null},{"attribute":"longitude","value":"-73.78","units":null,"value_type":"Float","id":null},{"attribute":"iata_code","value":"JFK","units":null,"value_type":"String","id":null},{"attribute":"airport","value":"John F Kennedy International","units":null,"value_type":"String","id":null},{"attribute":"country","value":"United States","units":null,"value_type":"String","id":null}],"formula_inputs":[],"identifier":"United States, New York - JFK - John F Kennedy International"},"4bd5cb39dfde7b12560033ff":{"id":"4bd5cb39dfde7b12560033ff","template_name":"transport","characteristics":[{"attribute":"label","value":"Long Haul International - Average","units":null,"value_type":"String","id":"4bd5cb39dfde7b1256003400"},{"attribute":"transport_type","value":"plane","units":null,"value_type":"String","id":"4bd5cb39dfde7b1256003401"},{"attribute":"flight_length","value":"Long-haul international","units":null,"value_type":"String","id":"4bd5cb39dfde7b1256003404"},{"attribute":"travel_class","value":"Average","units":null,"value_type":"String","id":"4bd5cb39dfde7b1256003405"}],"formula_inputs":[{"model_state":"active","name":"per_passenger_km","group_name":null,"values":{"km_uplift_factor":1.09,"co2":0.1122,"ch4":1.0e-05,"n2o":0.0011,"co2e":0.11331},"active_at":"2010-04-26T17:19:50Z","input_units":"km","label_input_units":"km per passenger","main_source_id":null,"source":null,"id":null}],"identifier":"Long Haul International - Average","used_formula_inputs":{"per_passenger_km":{"model_state":"active","name":"per_passenger_km","group_name":null,"values":{"km_uplift_factor":1.09,"co2":0.1122,"ch4":1.0e-05,"n2o":0.0011,"co2e":0.11331},"active_at":"2010-04-26T17:19:50Z","input_units":"km","label_input_units":"km per passenger","main_source_id":null,"source":null,"id":null}}}},"used_global_computations":{"haversine_distance_degrees":5568.769219237845}

This has vast of information for the developers so let me highlight a few key aspects of what we get back;

Calculations

{"calculations":{"co2":{"value":681.049338,"units":"kg"},"n2o":{"value":6.676954,"units":"kg CO2e"},"ch4":{"value":0.0607,"units":"kg CO2e"},"co2e":{"value":687.786992,"units":"kg"}}

Main Source Ids

4bebea80dfde7b477d000008"

This allow you to link to the browser to show your user where and how the result was obtained

http://browser.carboncalculated.com/main_sources/4bebea80dfde7b477d000008

Object References

{"id":"4b83f9af0e61b2220d00538d","template_name":"airport","characteristics":[{"attribute":"label","value":"United Kingdom, London - LGW","units":null,"value_type":"String","id":null},{"attribute":"airport_name","value":"London - LGW","units":null,"value_type":"String","id":null},{"attribute":"latitude","value":"51.15","units":null,"value_type":"Float","id":null},{"attribute":"longitude","value":"-0.19","units":null,"value_type":"Float","id":null},{"attribute":"iata_code","value":"LGW","units":null,"value_type":"String","id":null},{"attribute":"airport","value":"Gatwick","units":null,"value_type":"String","id":null},{"attribute":"country","value":"United Kingdom","units":null,"value_type":"String","id":null}],"formula_inputs":[],"identifier":"United Kingdom, London - LGW - Gatwick"}

All the generic objects (objects) that were used in the calculation will be returned; this enables a developer to have access to characteristics that these objects have and utilise them accordingly;

The airport JFK will bring back its latitude, longitude, and country;

The transport object “long haul flight” will tell you its uplight factor its attached emissions values and where they came from; via its source id; this can then be used to inform the end user exactly how the result was calculated;

Used Computations

"used_global_computations":{"haversine_distance_degrees":5568.769219237845}

Here we can clearly see that we get the distance from the two airports; it even explains the formula used to get that distance; how transparent is that!

Super Calculators

Having validations at the CORE of the calculators enables us to give developers powerful features; we use these features here to build automatic UIs for our calculators that we build; Our QA application are an example of this;

Lets find the emissions of travelling by London Bus for 10Km

/calculators/4bab7e17f78b122cdd000001/answer.json?api_key=your_api_key&transport_type=4bd5cb38dfde7b1256003360&transport=4bd5cb38dfde7b1256003361&no_of_journeys=1&no_of_people=1&distance=10&formula_input_name=per_passenger_km

Look!!!!!!!!!!

/calculators/4bab7e17f78b122cdd000001/

this the same calculator for the previous flight calculation we did; But this calculator contains many computations; one for flight one for flight using airport; and one for other transport vehicles.

How can this work??? How does it know what to calculated? Validations

Why is this so cool?

You the developer may not know what the user wants to calculate; however you know it evolves transport!

Therefore you can just use the passenger transport calculator to determine what kind of transport calculation it need to use

Now when you create a Journey calculator for instance; you dont have to create logic in determining what calculation to use; just ask the platform to determine it for you;

Its hard to convey how powerful this feature is? But if you into carbon calculations; please look at our new QA application for Defra Waste emissions; this has 16 separate computations and yet it we only have to send the users answers to to the 1 calculator; this means no extra logic; no extra code; time saved; LOTS!