Project Overview

Our project used a CVS tree to help organize the source code and share files. This contains the history of all source code as well as our personal comments at each change.

CVS home page for home information

Group List

Name	e-mail
David Fries	dfries@umr.edu
Joseph Barker	jwbarker@umr.edu
Donald Benne	dbenne@umr.edu
Geoffrey Roth	geoff@umr.edu
Ryan Rule	rmr@umr.edu
Matthew Ryan	mjr@umr.edu
Philip Thiem	ptt@umr.edu

Screen capture

Here is an example power grid from the configuration file r118org_g.conf

Example program animation

Click on image above to view an animation of the program in action. It is an animated gif and 1.2 megs in length.

Input Configuration file Specification

There are two files that the program reads. The configuration file and the update file. The configuration file defines everything the program needs except how much current is flowing on the lines. The update file is what comes from the backend running and provides how much current is actually going though each line. Both files are formated with a single character beginning the line and that character tells what data is contained in that line

configuration file

The character that begins the line is listed along with an explanation of that what line means and does. An example line follows.

'c' comment line
c The algorith is from Goldberg and Tarjan
'p' power line, it is the key words 'p max' followed by the maximum number of nodes followed by the number of edges (lines) in the system.
p max 120 476
global source, sink: The power system is designed so there really is only one source of power and one sink for power to go. How this is actually modeled is there is a transmission line from the global source to each node that is to generated power,

'n' followed by the node number designated as the global source and the node designated or the global sink; followed by 's' for source, 't' for sink

n 119 s

n 120 t
'a' arch or transmission line; lists the node the line goes from and the node it goes to followed by the maximum current the line can take, currently the file specifies two configuration file lines for each transmission line, one with the from and two reversed
a 1 2 1244

a 2 1 1244
'g' the only addition we made to the confiruation file, this specifies the node number followed by the geometric x and y coordinates followed by an optional text string that will be displayed in the program. What is listed in the demo run is numeric, but it doesn't need to be.
A note about the current impimentation. A geometric entry must be present for each node listed, and they must start with one and increment by one until all nodes have geometric information.

g 1 58 24 1

Planned features

GUI, Graphical User interface. Buttons namely. Things like quit, run backend, select all nodes, give information on next selected node, mostly so the program isn't just a canvas with only mouse interface and invisible key input.
- who: Philip Thiem
- status: Philip has reported the framework works with the display portion of the current program and he is working on defining the buttons and what they will be doing.
Networking to back end. This is to allow the backend to be independ of the running program.
- who: Donald Benne, Matthew Ryan
- status: There is code for communicating for the client side and server side. It still needs to run the backend, get the restuls from the backend and be integrated with the main portion of the program. They mentioned having issues with getting notified when a child process has terminated.
Improved graphical display. This is planned to include more of a 3D look, though everything will be drawn on a plain it will have depth to it. This is to convey more information about the current flow, maximum flow, and make it more appealing to look at.
- who: Geoffrey Roth
- status:
Loading an image into the background.
- who: Joseph Barker
- status: Basically the translation and scalling transformations are the only thing to be completed to function in the displays corrdinate system.
Making an overview window to pan in.
web interface
- who: Ryan Rule
- status: knoledge for component code is there, just need to write the programs and put it together
rendering output for web interface
- who: David Fries
- status: There is code to render and output an image though CGI-BIN to the web browser, it is waiting on the web interface and networked backend to run.

By David Fries, April 13, 2001.

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