Using the Illuminator Simulation Tool and Embedded Systems to Visually Demonstrate Energy Systems

Abstract

This thesis discusses the integration of the Illuminator software with hardware components, for the purpose of creating a table-top, Plug-and-Play energy system demonstrator. The thesis starts by introducing the motivation for an energy system demonstrator in Chapter 1. An interactive, visual demonstrator can help educate people on energy systems in a way that
is more intuitive. The main product should show the power flow on the table, implement Plug-and-Play dynamics, and be scalable. LED strips are used to visualize power flows in the table-top network, in combination with the Digispark ATtiny85. For determining the topology, static ID pairs were used. A double simulation is used to implement Plug-and-Play dynamics.
The first simulation configures the topology used by the second simulation, based on the hardware connections. The second simulation runs the Illuminator simulation. During this simulation, checks are run to see whether a physical connection has changed, such as a cable being unplugged. The simulation and then starts the reconfiguration process again.
Testing the reliability and run-time of the implementation is documented in Chapter 6, with a focus on how well the implementation scales with the size of the simulation. It was concluded that the Digispark’s communication with the Raspberry Pi would often stall, requiring error correction to be implemented. Even then, the data transfer to the Digispark from the Raspberry Pi fails on the first try an average of 48% of the time. Determining how long a setup takes to reconfigure was estimated using a computer, since the Raspberry Pi’s aren’t powerful enough to simulate dozens of models. It was determined that a reconfiguration of 20 models takes about 100 seconds.