COSC1078 Introduction to Information Technology Assessment 3: Our IT Project
Overview
Topic
Motivation
Landscape
Detailed Description
Aims
Plans and Progress
Roles
Scope and Limits
Tools and Technologies
Testing
Timeframe
Risks
Group processes and Communication
Team Profile
Team Name- Energy Savers
Name: Abu Shafin Solaiman
Student number: s3643565
Student email: s3643565@student.rmit.edu.au
I am an international student from Bangladesh studying here at RMIT University. I am currently studying for a Bachelor of Business (Information Systems). I am in my final semester of my final year. I am into playing football and badminton in my leisure time. Besides playing, I also love listening to music and watching movies or going for long drives. I did an internship under an IT firm a few months ago and gained some knowledge about how the IT industry works. I got to learn more about cloud computing and AWS. Our group has performed really well for assignment 3. Despite one of the members of the group leaving all of a sudden, we managed to divide the workload evenly. That is the only change we brought in for this assignment. My ideal job would be a Business Analyst or a Cloud Engineer. Within the group, I met some smart people where someone wants to learn about AI, someone who is already working in his field as a representative of energy saving programs and also someone who just started knowing about IT and plans to learn in detail about the IT world. All 3 of them are very hard-working and have a set goal that they want to achieve and that is what makes them special in my eyes.
Name:Tianlang Huang.
Student number:s3886233
email:s3886233@student.rmit.edu.au
My name is Tianlang Huang, I am 20. This is my first year in RMIT university. I feel very excited. My favourite sport is basketball. In my free time, I like to learn about something interesting in IT.
Name:Abhiraj Singh.
Student number:s3774607
email:s3774607@student.rmit.edu.au
My name is Abhiraj Singh. I am a state level table tennis player.I love sports and more than that I love working. I am a hardworking individual who became a manager in a company working under the government scheme at a very early age of 18. I started my own business in the same industry in partnership with the company I was manager at. I have a team of 11 people and we enjoy working together. I was very excited about the subject as it covered the part of the business I am in and made my brain run in innovating this amazing project on which this whole project is about.
Name: Zelong Liu
Student number: S3794027
E-mail: s3794027@student.emit.edu.au
I am a student from RMIT majoring in Information Technology. I am twenty years old. I graduated from RMIT Foundation then to Bachelor of Information Technology. I am interested in artificial intelligence and networking. I became interested in networking when I was in primary school, because I like playing online computer games and often encounter hacker players. Moreover, I am interested in artificial intelligence because my uncle gave me the idea. His job is related to IT and tells me It will be popular.
Tools
github:https://github.com/group8a3/group8a3.github.io.git
website:https://group8a3.github.io/
Project Description
Topic
The task Idea our gathering has thought of is to create a site and at a later stage attempt a versatile viable application too. The site would be named “Energy Savers”. On an outline of our thought, it is a straightforward site which would assist clients with saving energy just by supplanting their current appliances with new energy saving apparatuses liberated from cost.
The site would assist them with computing their current energy use just as give them a good guess of yearly investment funds by supplanting energy saver items. Every one of the items referenced on the site are supported by the Victorian Government and Essential Services Committee and are taken care of by their expenses under the Victorian Energy Upgrades (VEU) program. The site would likewise go about as a lead age site for the Accredited Providers working under a similar plan and produce income for both the developers and the organization where it adds onto saving energy utilization for the customer and the public authority.
Motivation
The existence or absence of motivation among project individuals can decide if a venture succeeds or fails. So it is our team’s duty to make sure the project succeeds its goals and brings the best possible outcomes for the users. People have various triggers of inspiration and it is an intricate task to comprehend the fundamental persuasive drivers of each individual from a task, particularly on the grounds that undertakings are described by limitations of time and assets. This is a very important and interesting project because we want to help create a world with no greenhouse gas and build a clean and healthy environment that will operate with renewable energy. We want to live up to our project’s name which is ‘Energy Savers’ and we want to preach the world on how to save energy.
Our goal is to make sure that there is no shortage of energy in the environment as the environment today is facing a shortage in resources in every sector. The sources of energy generation are depleting due to heavy usage in industries and growing population living in residences. We want to give the public an overview of their daily consumption of energy by the help of a website. This thought led to our group an inspiration to sort out a path by taking assistance from the current government plan and making our site to connect consumers to it and spread awareness. What keeps us going with this thought is that this plan has been around for a very long time and plans on adding new items to its program each year. In this way, the thought may likewise last in excess of a couple of years to help both the consumers and the public authority.
Landscape
Currently, there are multiple government energy saving schemes that are similar to our project. In Victoria, there is Victorian Energy Upgrades (VEU) which is a government program that supplies households with discounted energy efficient products and services. New South Wales have Energy Saving Schemes (ESS) which helps in reducing energy consumption in NSW by creating financial motivations for organisations to invest in energy saving projects. All these schemes are there in the market today, and all of them have the same goal as ours and that is saving energy but they are just providing the consumers with discounted energy efficient products whereas we want the consumers to know how they can cut down their daily consumption and what can they do from their end. The factor that makes our project different and unique then the two schemes mentioned are, we plan to introduce a website for consumers and want them to know how much energy they are consuming and how much they can save just by replacing their old appliances and can contribute in building a cleaner and healthier environment.
Detailed Description
Aims
Energy efficiency simply means utilizing less energy to complete the same task – that is, getting rid of any waste of energy. Energy efficiency brings an assortment of advantages: less emissions of greenhouse gas, decreasing interest for energy imports, and bringing down our expenses on household and economy-wide levels. While environmentally friendly power innovations additionally help achieve these targets, improving energy efficiency is the least expensive – and frequently the quickest – approach to decrease the utilization of petroleum products. There are colossal freedoms for efficiency upgrades in each area of the economy, regardless of whether it is structures, transportation, industry, or energy generation (EESI, 2021).
Some ways we aim to help different sectors of the economy are we are looking closely to optimize building efficiency and bring in renewable energy resources that will lead to zero-energy buildings. For existing buildings, we plan to reduce energy consumption and costs by replacing old-school light bulbs with LED bulbs and other energy efficient appliances. Consolidated heat and power systems capture the waste heat emitted from industrial power plants and use it to give heating, cooling, as well as supply high temperature water to nearby close structures and offices. This expands the energy effectiveness of power generation from roughly 33 percent to up to 80 percent. The brilliant framework is another framework that will improve the effectiveness of electric generation, circulation, and consumption. We aim to bring this matter into the big power plant’s attention so that they start installing these systems to transfer all the wasteful heat energies and convert them to consumable energy. This will reduce the amount of energy loss.
We also want people to be more efficient and reduce the consumption of energy in every way possible. When someone has to travel to a nearby place, they can do so by using a bicycle or by simply using public transport or just by walking. This will not only save energy and reduce waste energy emissions but also let them lead a healthier lifestyle.
In today’s world, there are vehicles that are energy effective which require less fuel to cover a given distance. This creates less outflows and makes them essentially more affordable to work. Plug-in hybrid and completely electric vehicles are especially eco-friendly and are now being offered at affordable prices.
Our project’s end goal is to change the way individuals utilize these innovations will fundamentally affect their effectiveness. What effect can a highly efficient technology have if families and organizations are not persuaded to purchase, install, or implement these methods? What number of individuals will utilize public transportation if there is a social disgrace against it? Studies have shown that 30% of the potential energy investment funds of high efficiency technologies is lost because of social, cultural, and monetary components. So, it is our duty to address all these factors that are mentioned above to the people and give them knowledge and teach them ways on how to implement these systems and how to make a better and cleaner world.
reference
(EESI), E., 2021. Energy Efficiency | EESI. [online] Eesi.org. Available at: https://www.eesi.org/topics/energy-efficiency/description#:~:text=Energy%20efficiency%20simply%20means%20using,household%20and%20economy%2Dwide%20level. [Accessed 19 May 2021].
Plans and Progress
EnergySaversAU as an site itself was made to help people save energy by lowering their consumption of power by replacing their existing high power consuming appliances to low powered ones free of cost under the Government’s program running in Victoria under the name VEU program and by different names in different states of Australia. The site would help them calculate their existing energy usage as well as give them a rough estimate of annual savings by replacing energy saver products. All the products mentioned on the site are approved by the Victorian Government and Essential Services Committee and are covered by their costs under the Victorian Energy Upgrades (VEU) program. The site would also act as a lead generation site for the Accredited Providers working under the same scheme and generate revenue for both developers and the company where in also saving energy consumption for the client and the government. The way to we plan on achieving this is by creating an database of clients which can be traded with the Accredited providers by the government in exchange for Victorian Energy Efficiency Certificates (VEECs) which can later be traded for money according to the price on the market per certificate. Every appliance listed under the site would generate certain amount of certificates which would be collected from the Accredited Providers as a given target of customers is achieved. Looking forward of saving the environment.
The environment today is facing a shortage in resources in every sector. The sources of energy generation are depleting due to heavy usage in industries and growing population living in residences. In the earlier days coal and wood were burned to generate energy, then came the invention of water dams later came solar. But the point of all these inventions may not be able to cope up with the amount of growing needs in the society. In order to protect these fossil fuels, we need to figure out a way by which we can reduce the amount of energy these industries and residences use on the daily bases. This gave our group a new motivation to figure out a way by taking help of the existing government scheme and making our site to connect people to it and spread awareness. What keeps us going with this idea is that this scheme has been around for 8 years and plans on adding new products to its program every year. So, the idea may also last more than a few years to support both people and the government.
Looking forward of saving the environment by the running program all the pre existing appliances will have a photo taken of them working along with the electricity bill of the address the product is being changed and also a basic site plan of the product being replaced in the area. All these pictures will be used as an evidence for the appliances being changed under the program so that the same address cannot avail again for the program. The existing products after the pre installation documentation is complete and uploaded to the crm would be replaced with the new product. The power cords would be cut near to the base and a decommissioning picture evidence would be taken of the product which would then be recycled and the certificate achieved in trading those for recycling would then act as an eligible upgrade.
Accredited Providers have the right to install the products under Victorian upgrade scheme and all the products approved under the program are purchased by these providers to meet the needs of the sales and clients. Our site providing them clients would help these providers build sales and get in contact with new clients. Buying the stock and getting the product installed is the providers duty whereas meeting standards, getting feedbacks and promotions is the backend team’s duty.
Victoria at the moment has 11 Accredited providers which perform the listed activities on full scale and can support installation from lead generation companies. Some supporting APs are listed below:- TimeToSave Pty Ltd – The company has been in the market for about 6 years now and has been supporting both commercial as well as residential activities under Victorian Energy Upgrade program. Since the inception, the company has been working under Victorian Energy Efficiency Target (VEET) scheme to help Australian businesses and households switch to energy-efficient lighting products that save money on energy bills while availing benefits of subsidies.
All our products are VEET approved and they meet Australian ACMA quality and safety standards. All LED replacements are done by A-grade installers. TimeToSave offers turnkey energy efficiency upgrade services, with full vertical integration from site analysis, energy-saving solutions to implementation and applying government rebates.
EnergySaversAU Pty Ltd – The company has been in the market for a couple of years now and has been reducing the carbon footprint in the commercial sector. The company specialises in LED lighting upgrades to reduce mercury emissions as well as save energy. The process of commercial lighting as mentioned on their website is as follows (energysaversau.com) –
In commercial LED lighting, we work with an extensive range of premium brands like Phillips, Ledvance Osram, Emerald Planet, Haneco, Primsal, Onsemi, Eco light up, Energetic, Wattsgreen, Pierlite Pierlux, SAL, and Optitech.
We offer a broad category of wattage catering to varying business requirements. We expertise in industrial and office lighting where we provide free* LED high bay replacement while offering a broad range of brightness, starting from 90W to 150W, and, office LED panels of 13W, 18W, 19.5W, 26W, and 32W.
We ensure ease of business where our customer only needs to take the first step and we do the rest. All the work is completed by A-grade electricians who have industry experience with different types of businesses.
Once the installation is completed, we take care of recycling and decommissioning of replaced products. At the end of the process, the customer is handed over with the paperwork of installation, warranties, and electrical safety.
The APs together generate about 3 million certificates a year saving millions of tons of emissions every year. According to Essential Services Committee of Victoria- “Victorian Energy Upgrades is a Victorian government energy efficiency program that gives every Victorian household and business the opportunity to receive rebates or discounts on energy saving products. Every upgrade allows businesses accredited under the program called Accredited Providers to generate Victorian Energy Efficiency Certificates.
Each certificate represents one tonne of greenhouse gas that has been prevented from entering our atmosphere.
Accredited providers then sell these certificates to energy retailers.
The Victorian Government sets annual greenhouse gas reduction targets that require energy retailers to buy a certain number of certificates.
In 2021, energy retailers will help reduce Victoria’s greenhouse gas emissions by 6.5 million tonnes through energy efficiency.
The target increases each year and will be 6.7 million tonnes in 2022. For information on new targets and program expansion.
reference
(https://www.victorianenergysaver.vic.gov.au/save-energy-and-money/victorian-energy-upgrades)
Roles
We plan on creating a website for our users where they can give inputs about their current electrical appliances and in return, they can get suggestions on what they can replace to reduce energy consumption. To create this website, we first need a website owner who can be a person or the whole organization who will have complete ownership rights over the website. The most key role in this would be of the web developers. The web developer is someone who will be creating the website. This can be done by any one of us from our team or we can hire someone. It would be wiser to hire a professional web developer to avoid any mistakes as the website would have a lot of public interactions and we would not want the website to be down when people are using it. Once the website has been built, we will then need a graphics designer. They are the ones who create the look and feel of the site by incorporating graphics, logo, branding and themes. Although some web developers additionally are graphics designers, they are really two distinct specialties. In certain circumstances, it could be wiser to recruit a graphics designer and a web designer, and let each person specialize in what they do best. Once the website has been published, now it needs to be promoted for the users to know about this. We then need to hire a Marketing or social media specialist to advertise the website. This will make more users aware of the scheme and help them calculate and measure their daily usage of energy. At the start of the project, we will need a project manager who will help in organizing, planning and directing the completion of the project we aim to build. Project managers are further needed for the coordination between projects, client advancement and conveying the project on schedule by aiding/supporting the groups which are associated with the project.
Scope and Limits
The scope of the project decided in the beginning was just to help households with upgrade of lights and business with upgrade of industry lights which was later with the progress of the project increased to where we would be accommodating all the appliances available under the rebate program which also includes water heaters, air conditioners, door seals, chimney balloons and so many more items. This was done to help households and businesses to approach this site as a one stop shop for all the available products under the scheme. All the Accredited providers perform different activities where this site would also help different Accredited providers to work under the same address for different products.
The scope of the project includes –
- Building the interface for the site
- Connecting the data collected to a cloud database
- Displaying all the new products added to the VEU activity register
- Adding model numbers and consumption data to our database to do the calculation of energy for the pre existing set up.
- Feedback capability
- Providing a quality proposal in 24 hours of the request made
The limits of the project include –
- Not being able to provide with industry level interface at this point but strive to improve with time.
- Not being able to provide with 24/7 live support as planned earlier due to shortage of developers and staff.
- Not being able to connect the maps API for quick location connect to find an installer in the nearby idea.
The limits of the product are of major role because of the shortage of time frame and investment.
Tools and Technologies
There are multiple tools and technologies needed to complete this project. We must set things accordingly for both the front and back ends. For the front end we will be needing Vaadin, which is an open-source platform for web development. Vaadin is an Apache 2.0-licensed, open-source framework. The framework and components are free to use for any purpose. It comes with an inbuilt support for Javascript and AJAX. Vaadin can likewise empower us to incorporate outer highlights into it utilizing Google Web toolbox. Vaadin is an efficient device for the designers as it delivers a rich substance in the program without the assistance of any markup records. Not at all like customer driven systems, a Vaadin application never opens its internals to the program where weaknesses can be utilized by an assailant. Vaadin mechanizes the correspondence among worker and customer through a solitary, secure endpoint.
For the backend, we use Spring boot. Spring Boot is an open-source Java-based framework used to create a micro-Service. It is developed by Pivotal Team and is used to build stand-alone and production ready spring applications. The Spring Framework is an application system and reversal of control compartments for the Java stage. The structure’s centre highlights can be utilized by any Java application, yet there are augmentations for building web applications on top of the Java EE platform.
One of the key things we need for our project is a database tool. We plan to use MongoDB. MongoDB is a source-accessible cross-stage document-oriented database program. Classified as a NoSQL data set program, MongoDB utilizes JSON-like records with discretionary patterns. Rich and expressive query language will allow us to filter and sort by any field, no matter how nested it may be within a document. and sort by any field, no matter how nested it may be within a document.
We need to store all the records and data and for that we need a cloud computing platform, and we are going to use AWS. Amazon Web Services is an auxiliary of Amazon giving on-request distributed computing stages and APIs to people, organizations, and governments, on a metered pay-as-you-go basis. Amazon Web Services offers dependable, adaptable, and reasonable distributed computing administrations. Allowed to join, pay just for what you use. Amazon Web Services offers a wide arrangement of worldwide cloud-based items including compute, storage, databases, analytics, networking, mobile, developer tools, management tools, IoT, security and enterprise applications. These services help associations move quicker, lower IT expenses, and scale. AWS is trusted by the biggest ventures and the most smoking new companies to control a wide assortment of jobs including: web and versatile applications, game developments, data processing and warehousing, storage, document, and numerous others.
Testing
We need to be clear about the purpose of our project tests. Firstly, We test the execution of the program. Secondly, to find program errors, second, to make sure that the product does what it is promised or announced to do, third, to make sure that the product meets performance and efficiency requirements, and third, to make sure that the product is robust and adaptable to the user environment.
To test our project, we first conducted a demand analysis to clarify the scope of the demand, understand what problems the demand specifically solves for users and the extent to which the demand needs to be realized. We need to analyze the function of each functional section, page and function point of our product to test whether it can meet the needs of our users. We have to test the software as a user, simulating all the behaviors that the user might do, keeping in mind every page of the software, every function of the software. When you encounter a problem to mention a bug, the title and content should be described clearly, concisely, without ambiguity, write down the steps to reproduce, and it is best to attach a screenshot of the problem. After each test is completed, be sure to write a test report, summarize the problems you encounter or think unreasonable places, logic to be clear, the number of words to be concise. Then do functional testing. We test each step of our program for links to see if they jump correctly, if there are empty pages and invalid pages, and if there are incorrect error messages returned. Then the program is tested for the submission function, whether the multimedia elements can be loaded and displayed correctly, and whether the multilingual support can display the selected language correctly, etc. We also need to do compatibility tests for our program. First of all, the browser compatibility test, mainly on the page format, font, page display and the implementation of various functions of the check. We can use a PC to install multiple browser models for testing. By running the test system, various browsers of the terminal are tested. Operating system compatibility was then tested on multiple PCs with each browser installed. These are our internal tests, and we will launch a public beta after the internal tests are completed. We will send out invitations to energy-related practitioners to test our software and collect their opinions on how to upgrade or fix our software.
Timeframe
Risks
1.Design complicacy
Considering the complicacy of our group project, the first problem will be the design problem. Our project users are almost all people who are using electronic appliances.For most user’s convenience, having a concise, friendly, easy interface is important and necessary.That means we need to know and use some interface design tools like figma, sketch, and xd. Also languages like HTML,CSS. Because of the cultural diversity, we need to provide different languages for people to browse the website without any language barrier. We also need to provide some special designs for people who have eyesight, color blind problems. That can help most people who have eyesight problems visit the website easily. In addition, our project needs to provide services, so we need to set efficient, accurate services to people. So we may need smart Artificial technology, and online services. Because Artificial technology and online services can solve ,receive and collect problems easily. That helps us easily understand what is the problem from our website and mobile app.
2.Security and user’s personalization
Our project idea will be available to a wide range of people, and it also involves money,trading, user’s privacy. So the security needs to be taken seriously, our website and mobile app may need an intrusion prevention system to protect website and mobile app from hostile attack and hacker attack. Because of the importance of user’s privacy and user personalization in recent years. We need to respect the user’s wishes, Because that can help us to provide high quality services while protecting the privacy of users. About the user’s personalization, our website and mobile app provide the services of collecting the data, sending interesting items to users,booking items system, and warranty services. It can help users be comfortable,easy,safe to use our website and mobile app.
3.Possibility to achieve ,design cost and website,app operating fee
Our project is to provide services to users, the detail is free to replace the existing appliances to energy saving appliances. Because the different appliances have different situations,being free to replace a new,same type appliance seems impossible,and operating the project needs lots of funds and information.So we may need companies or the government’s support to operate the project. Compared with other projects, this kind of project is like government politics. And the electronic products are updating all the time, so the website and mobile app must be updated usually.That means the maintenance cost may be high. Our project also provides functional services for administrators ,like An admin panel, which can view the number of bookings made in the day, number of bookings installed, feedback given, APs contacts, product database and user database. That is helpful to manage the work, but it also will increase the operating fee,design time and design difficulty of websites and mobile apps. In conclusion, our project needs a large amount of funds, techniques to operate,and design needs lots of work.
Group processes and Communication
In fact, many problems in projects are the result of poor communication. For the project, to scientifically organize, command, coordinate and control the implementation process of the project, it is necessary to carry out information communication.
The influence of communication on a project is always subtle, so people often do not feel the important role of communication in a successful project, but in the painful reflection of a failed project, they can see the harm of poor communication.
Before the communication, the group leader should make clear what the real purpose of the communication is and What do you want them to understand? Aimless communication is the usual sense of chatter, but also ineffective communication. Determine the communication goal, the content of communication will be organized and planned around the goal to be achieved by communication, and different communication methods can be selected according to different purposes. Without affecting the work, our group will arrange technical exchanges once every two days. Then our group will arrange a summary meeting every week. This meeting will be scheduled on Friday of every week. In this meeting, we will try to arrange face-to-face communication.
If you don’t keep abreast of the progress of the project, member will be surprised by the changes that occur as the project progresses. Our group uses Teams to communicate in online, and this app is convenient for us to chat in groups. I prefer to communicate with team members every time they finish a progress, so that I think differences can be avoided. If someone in the group can’t be reached, I try to call him or leave an email message.