Sunday, May 10, 2009

CEB's New Energy and Costing System - EnCoSys

Ceylon Electricity Board (CEB), the prime electricity supplier of the country, is a government statutory body corporate established in Sri Lanka under an Act of Parliament No.17 of
1969. Its main functionalty are the development and coordination of the Generation,
supply and distribution of Electrical Energy.

Over the past years, CEB was not so successful in minimizing the energy loss in the their transmission network and hence the energy loss still remains as a considerable amount. Recently, we got to know that CEB's manual way of energy calculation is one reason for that. Due to the unefficiency of this process, the management is unable to attain actual figures of the energy losses and hence they have to work based on estimatations.

With the coordination from CEB's depeuty general manager Mr. M.G. Tillekeratne, a team of undergraduates from Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Moratuwa has developed an energy calculation and costing system (EnCoSys) for CEB in order to overcome the above stituation.

EnCoSys is a web based system designed totally according to CEB requirements. It can be considered as a re-implementation of one of their internal project, ECCS which was an attempt to develop such a system using Delphi4 with Informix as the back-end database few years back. However, with the change of CEB management ECCS had been discontinued. With the new EnCCoSys system, it enables CEB to keep track of energy transfers and associated costs between its three divisions, namely;
  • Generation division
  • Transmission division and
  • Distribution division
Login Screen
Main menu

As a whole, system is intended to keep track of energy transfers between generation, transmission and distribution divisions of Ceylon Electricity Board. It provides facility to the board to accurately measure and calculate the energy transfer costs. The application is capable of performing the following basic features.
  • Generation Entity Hierarchy Management
  • Meter Management
  • Distribution Entity Management
  • IPP and Mini-Hydro Management
  • Total Energy/Cost Calculation
  • Report Generation
  • Calculation of the Transmission loss
  • Meter Reading Tracking
Adding new meter reading

At each station, meter readings will be fetched to the system in monthly basis.

EnCoSys Equation Builder

EnCoSys's equation builder eanbles its users to define and store energy equations for each meterpoint. During the energy/cost calculation, these equations are interprited dynamically with each meter readings for appropriate cycles, and then solved to the final figure.

Generation division - Sub Control Pannel
Central Confirmation Page

In order to introduce new technologies to CEB IT division, EnCoSys has been developed with Microsoft .NET platform. The web system uses ASP.NET 2.0 and EnCoSys core is developed with C# .NET. According to a pervious requiement of porting to Informix database server, all the database communication was done through odbc layer with generic SQL commands, so that it could be possible to port EnCoSys to any database server having associared odbc driver.

EnCoSys Messaging System
Energy Report

Further, EnCoSys has a properly designed, easily exitensible architecture though it was developed according to rapid application developement approach due to time constrains. The requirement engineering process was undergone comprehensively with hours of discussions at CEB.

The architectural release was handed over to CEB's internal development team at CEB headoffice on 2nd March. Furthermore a knowledge transfer workshop was conducted at the same place. We hope that they will continue with the system deploy EnCoSys there in the near future.

Dhanuka Senarathne, Harshana Porawagama, Isuru Senadheera, Janaka Padukka, Lahiru Samarakoon, Rajeev Prasad (EnCoSys Development Team)

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Internet Broadcasting with Mogulus

Recently when I was exploring flash streaming over internet, I found an interesting powerful broadacasting platform called Mogulus. Local tv broadcaster, ITN is testing their streamings these days and used Mogulus sometimes back. Well it worked very well, with a good video quality than others.

Mogulus is one of the most powerful live broadcast platforms on the internet. Mogulus' browser-based Studio application is a powerful platform to create LIVE, scheduled and on-demand internet television to broadcast anywhere on the web through a single player widget.

The virtual studio is a great application where you can feel like working in a real tv station environment. It offres the following features.
  • tream LIVE with any USB or DV camera
  • Mix multiple cameras and clips in real-time
  • Add broadcast graphics
  • Server-based recording for instant on-demand replays
  • Stream remotely using a datacard or mobile phone
  • YouTube and Media RSS Feed import
  • Create automated 24/7 channels from clips
Mogulus offers both Free (ad-supported) and Pro (white-label, no-ads, pay for usage) packages. Its unique features include the ability to mix multiple live cameras, imported videos clips, and overlay graphics. With Mogulus, you can also broadcast live from a mobile phone; use a customizable flash player with integrated chat; and develop a branded channel page on Mogulus.com that incorporates interactive chat.


Later, when I was browsing there, I found that "Ranaviru" channel launched sometimes back to broadacst defence news is also operating on Mogulus at http://www.mogulus.com/ranavirutv


Further, Mogulus recently announced the launch of PROCASTER, a free software download available at www.procaster.com that allows you to create live streaming video content with incredible ease and unprecedented production value.

PROCASTER offers the simplest-to-use broadcast experience, with simple user interface. In addition to high-quality video, you can broadcast whatever is on your computer screens live, including presentations, images, and even video and graphics-intensive video games. PROCASTER even streams the most demanding of computer applications; graphics-intensive high-end video games, enabling creation of a whole new form of entertainment around GameCasting.

Sunday, April 26, 2009

Testing an Anti-Virus Software

If you want some way of checking that you have deployed your anti-virus software correctly,there exists a test file to do that easily.

This test file has been provided to European Institute for Computer Anti-Virus Research (EICAR) for distribution as the "EICAR Standard Anti-Virus Test File". It is safe to pass around, because it is not a virus, and does not include any fragments of viral code. Every Anti-virus vendor do this test before every release of their product, in order to ensure that it really works. Hence most products react to it as if it were a virus.

The file is actually a legitimate DOS program, and produces sensible results when run (it prints the message "EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!").

It is also short and simple - in fact, it consists entirely of printable ASCII characters, so that it can easily be created with a regular text editor. Any anti-virus product that supports the EICAR test file should detect it in any file providing that the file starts with the following 68 characters, and is exactly 68 bytes long:

X5O!P%@AP[4\PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!$H+H*

The first 68 characters is the known string. It may be optionally appended by any combination of whitespace characters with the total file length not exceeding 128 characters.

In order to facilitate various scenarios, they provide 4 files for download at http://www.eicar.org. (You can download it by following "Anti-Malware Test File" link on the top right corner of the site.)

The first, eicar.com, contains the ASCII string as described above. The second file, eicar.com.txt, is a copy of this file with a different filename. Some readers reported problems when downloading the first file, which can be circumvented when using the second version. Just download and rename the file to "eicar.com". That will do the trick. The third version contains the test file inside a zip ARCHIVEe. A good anti-virus scanner will spot a 'virus' inside an ARCHIVEe. The last version is a zip ARCHIVEes containing the third file. This file can be used to see whether the virus scanner checks ARCHIVEes more than only one level deep.

Once downloaded run your Anti-Virus scanner. It should detect at least the file "eicar.com". Good scanners will detect the 'virus' in the single zip Archive and may be even in the double zip Archive. Once detected the scanner might not allow you any access to the file(s) anymore. You might not even be allowed by the scanner to delete these files. This is caused by the scanner which puts the file into quarantine. The test file will be treated just like any other real virus infected file.

Friday, April 17, 2009

Summer of ‘69 - Manipal University Theme Song

Wonderfully created by Manipal University. A must see.....

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

CSE බ්ලොග් යොමුව

අපේ නිමලෙ මේ දවස්වල අලුත් වැඩකට අතගහල. අපේ CSE 05 කන්ඩායමේ කොම්පියුටර් ඉන්ජිනේරුවොටිකගෙ බ්ලොග් ලිපිනයන් එකම වහලක් යටට ගන්න එක තමා මේ අලුත්ම වැඩේ. වහලක් කිව්වට ඉතින් මේක වහලක්ම නෙවේ. අන්තර්ජංජාල පොත් යොමු පිටුවක් කිව්වොත් තමා වඩා නිවැරදි. :)

ඉතින් කැම්පස් එකේ මේ අන්තිම දවස් ටිකේදි නිමලෙගෙ මේ අලුත් වැඩේ බොහොම හොද එකක් කියල තමයි මගේ නම් අදහස. මොකද ඉතින් ආපහු කට්ටිය එකතු කරගන්නත් ලේසිවෙන එකක් නැහැනෙ. ඒක නිසා මේක පස්සට හොඩ මතක සටහනක් වෙන්නැතෑ. ඇරත් පුදුම දැනුම් සම්භාරයක්නෙ මේවයෙ තියෙන්නෙ.

ඔක්කොම කියල කියල තාම වැදගත්ම දේ කියන්න බැරි උනානෙ. http://delicious.com/talkout/CSE05 තමයි ඒකට යන පුරුක. ඕකෙ මගෙ මේ බ්ලොග් එකෙ ලිපිනයත් ඇති. අනෙ ඉතින් මමයි මගෙ බ්ලොග් ලිවිල්ලයි..

ආවඩා ආයුබෝවේවා!!

මෙදා සැරේ සිංහල අලුත් අයුරුද්දෙන් පස්සෙ පරණ බ්ලොග් එකේ අලු ගසල බසල දාලා ගන්න හිතුව. පහුගිය මාස ගානටම මගෙ බ්ලොග් එක දිහා ඇහැක් ඇරලා බලන්න උනෙ නැහැ නෙව. ඉතින් මේ අලුත් අවුරුද්දෙ හාහාපුරා කියලා බ්ලොග් එකට අලුත් මූනතක් දාලම තමයි වැඩේ පටන් ගත්තෙ.

අහා. ඒකෙන් මේකෙන් මට කට්ටියට සුබ පතන්නත් බැරි උනා නෙව. ඕන්න එහෙනම් 120ට 220ක් ආවඩා ආයුබෝ වේවා කියල මුලු අවුරුද්දම කිරියෙන් පැනියෙන් ඉතිරෙන්න ඕනෙ. මේ අබුද්දස්ස කාලෙ ඖරුද්දට සුබ පතන එකත් දැන් වෙළද දැන්වීමක් වෙලා නෙව.මේ ඊයෙ පෙරේදා මගෙ යාලුවෙක් ඔය ඔක්කොම දැන්වීම් ටික එකතු කරලා හරි අපූරු සුබපැතුමක් එවල තිබ්බා මේ විදියට. "මේ ලබුවාවු නව වසර කිරියෙන්, පැනියෙන් සහ නෙස්ටොමොල්ට් රෙඩ් රයිස් අන්ඩ් ගොටුකොල වලින් පරි පූර්න වූ සුබම සුබ අල්ටිමේට් තීත්ත අලුත් අවුරුද්දක් වීවා. ඔබලා හට ඇති සියලු ප්රාර්තනා ඉහල උත්කර්ශන විදියට ලගා වී සියලු සැප සම්පත් සහ නීරොගි දිවියක් උඩාවෙවා...!!" බලමුකො ඒකෙත් හැටි. :)

කතාවෙන් කතාවෙන් මට ඒකත් අමතක උනා නෙව. අලුත් අවුරුද්දෙ සිංහලෙන්ම ලියන්න හිත හිතා ඉන්නකොට මට හම්බ උනා හරි අපූරු බඩුවක්. ඒක තමා කොළඹ විශ්ව විද්‍යාලයේ පරිගනක අංශයෙන් හදපු යුනිකෝඩ් එසැනින් පරිවර්තකය. අපිට පුරුදු SMS සිංග්ලිශ් වලින්ම ලියන්න පුලුවන් නිසා හරි ලේසි. අනික සිංහල යුනිකෝඩ් ඇර වෙන මොනවත් ස්ථාපනය කරන්නත් කරදර වෙන්න ඕනෙ නැහැ නෙව. ඔය පල්ලෙහායින් තියෙන පුරුකෙන් එතැනට ගියහැකි. http://www.ucsc.cmb.ac.lk/ltrl/services/feconverter/t1.html

If you can not read this, please install Sinhala Unicode in your computer from here. http://locallanguages.lk/

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Well done beijing

Woow woow woow.... What can i say... It was the most wonderful Olympics I have ever seen. I don't think London can even come closer to it in 2012. The special thing was that China made it a ceremony of humans, not the technology. I would like to congradulate Director Zhang Yimou for the marvellous job done.

I am proud to be an Asian!!