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Candidate: Ahmed Gurhan Title: Design and Development of

1. 100 4 m s e 1011 9 hPa am Rainfall T Wind chill TSG A oe pe a 0 mm 18 C Max values last week Min values last week Tepene Wind pea Air pressure Wired speed Ade pressure News amp Weather Weather TEs wi 1028 9 hPa js Age rating 12 Publisher Hans Petter Halvorsen H gskolen i Telemark Main App Page SE E Description Telemark University College Weather System App gives you current weather data and various weather trends from a weather station located in Telemark University College Porsgrunn Figure 9 3 The App in Windows Store website 60 Part V Summary 10 Discussions The main focus of this thesis work has been to create a Windows Store App from scratch and deploy it so everybody who is interested in the weather from the Weather System can download and install freely The development of Windows Store Apps was experienced for the first time during this thesis work therefore a lot of time was used in gathering information and learning about App development Windows Store Apps are also currently quite new in the market and the resources available are still limited Even though these challenges slowed down the development process a fully functional App was developed and successfully deployed in Windows Store The tests performed with the Windows Store App Certification Kit and the improvements done thereafter in several iterations has ruled out many problems and made the App more robust
2. Nomenclature This section gives a list of all the abbreviations used in the thesis API HTTP IDE IIS LabVIEW NI OPC OS SDK SOAP SQL TUC URI WNS WACK XML XAML Application Programming Interface Hypertext Transport Protocol Integrated Development Environment Internet Information Service Laboratory Virtual Instrumentation Engineering Workbench National Instruments OLE Object Linking and Embedding for Process Control Operating System Software Development Kit Simple Object Access Protocol Structured Query Language Telemark University College Uniform Resource Identifier Windows Push Notification Service Windows Store App Certification Kit Extensible Markup Language Extensible Application Markup Language Part I Overview 1 Introduction Weather is a phenomena that plays an important factor in our daily lives and we often make our plans based on the current weather or the forecast for the coming days or even weeks A lot of research has been done to improve our knowledge about the weather and new apparatus has been developed to measure and monitor weather parameters Advanced mathematical models has been developed to predict the weather for short and long term With the technological development we are today able to predict the weather with an increasing accuracy The apparatus and technical implementations used to measure and monitor weather parameters combined with the mathematical models used to
3. 10 1 Future Work All the functionalities requested in the task description for the App were covered and new functionalities such as the forecast page and the website were also added However there are still room for improvements and the following recommendations are proposed for future work to improve the App e Create a statistics page that shows the most important weather parameters side by side A solution could be to display the temperature variations for a specific period in a graph while highlighting the max min values and at the same time show how the other parameters changes during the same period e Show the maximum minimum value records The highest and lowest values recorded since the weather system was implemented e Show how many rain days or snow days for each month and each year 62 11 Summary A Windows Store App that presents weather data from the weather system installed at Telemark University College was created and deployed in Windows Store The App uses the Weather SDK web service to communicate with the weather system database and retrieve weather data The latest measurement data max min data and trend data are retrieved and presented on the App In addition to this weather forecast data from the Norwegian Metrological Institute MI is presented on a custom forecast page The data from MI is retrieved using a web service from yr no Live tile functionalities has also been implemented on the App to display short
4. GetHourly Average parameterName Ex GetHourlyAverage umtTempl GetMaxMin parameterName period max min A function that returns the data in WEATHER PARAMETER table in the database A function that expects a parameter name as input and returns 1ts latest recorded data Returns value time unit description A function that expects a parameter name as input and returns daily average values for the past 30 days Returns array of value time unit Description A function that expects a parameter name as input and returns hourly average values for the past 24 hours Returns array of value time unit Description This function takes a parameter name period and mode max or min as input and returns the maximum or minimum recorded data of the selected parameter in the selected period 21 3 4 1 Weather System Web Service The weather SDK also includes a web service allowing external applications to retrieve weather data from the database over the world wide web The web service is published on the server s IIS 18 with the address given in 16 The web service contains a set of functions that any application with internet access can use to get weather data Web service is a language independent technology used to transmit data across a network using the standard internet protocol HTTP Web services are called inter operable machine to machine language 19 meaning that applications written in diff
5. forecast data from the Norwegian Metrological Institute This forecast data is retrieved from a web service at yr no The structure of the application and the website will be discussed in this chapter using figures and explanations whilst avoiding the actual code Figure 7 1 shows a graphical overview of the App and the website Windows Store App TOR ATE Manage information tiles Sa y MEA TOR Ate 22 ASP NET website pS Weather SDK web service Weather System database Figure 7 1 Windows Store App 46 7 1 App Pages and Navigation The App contains the total number of 23 pages for presenting weather data These pages are e A Main page displaying the latest weather data and max min values e A forecast page displaying weather forecast data e 21 pages displaying weather trends Each page has a XAML file for the graphical user interface and a C file for the logic behind In addition to this live tile functionalities was implemented for displaying weather data in three tiles and information from the school in two of the tiles An interactive splash screen 1s also displayed during App start up Figure 7 2 shows the structure of the App Live tile Shows short updates App xaml cs lt Initializes the app Extended Load weather data Splash screen page Be A Display latest measurements and Main page OE max min data Latest data Forecast data Rainfall Temperature Wind speed Ai
6. 2 iOS 1 1OS has full support for the programming languages Objective C C and C 23 Objective C is the native programming language for 10S and OS X Other requirements for developing 1OS Apps are e A modern Mac preferably running OS X v 10 7 4 or later e Xcode Apple s integrated development environment IDE Can be downloaded as a bundle that includes the IDE 10S Simulator and the latest 10S SDKs 23 e Apple ID A developer account for selling apps through App Store costs 99USD year Free App developers can test their Apps on a simulator in the Xcode IDE but cannot deploy to devices or submit to App Store 24 26 4 3 Android The Android operating system was developed by Android Inc which was bought by Google in 2005 25 Android is an open source and free operating system based on the Linux kernel The operating system was first released in 2008 for smartphones and has since had a remarkable development The fact that Android is an open source OS has attracted many mobile device manufacturers and software developers from the whole world The manufactures need only to create the hardware and install the Android OS for free The developers on the other hand can focus fully on App development without worrying about the hardware The developers can also contribute in the development of the OS by reporting bugs or participating in open source discussions 26 This has fuelled the innovation and development of Android and th
7. Apple press info Available http www apple com pr library 20 13 01 07 App Store Tops 40 Billion Downloads with Almost Half in 2012 html Apple 2013 Xcode Available https developer apple com xcode index php Apple 2013 Apple ID Available https developer apple com register index action Wikipedia 2013 Android Available http en wikipedia org wiki Android_ operating_system Deitel Android How to Program 2013 Google 2013 Google Play Available https play google com store 64 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 sociable 2013 Google Play will hit one million apps this June Available http sociable co mobile google play will hit one billion apps this june Android Android 2013 Google Get the Android SDK 2013 Google Android Studio 2013 J Likness Building Windows 8 apps with C and XAML 2012 S Moreau Redesigning the Windows Logo ed 2012 ARM 2013 Processors Available http www arm com products processors index php Microsoft Windows Store Apps 2013 ComputerWeekly com 2013 BT rolls out toughened Windows 8 OS tablets for engineers Available http www computerweekly com news 2240171827 BT rolls out toughened Windows 8 OS tablets for engineers N INstruments 2013 National Instruments Available http norway ni com N Instrum
8. Observer Program CWOP 10 These are websites that can receive weather data and make these data available for the public The micro server can communicate with the Capricorn 2000EX Pegasus Magellan Orion or Pulsar 5 weather stations from Colombia weather systems Inc The micro server is configured to communicate with the control module using one of its serial ports while an Ethernet port is used for Modbus TCP IP communication over the school LAN 3 Weather System Project The system implemented around the weather station is used to retrieve weather data for display on the Windows Store App developed during this thesis work The system is quite complex and consists of many parts therefore this chapter will only give an overview of the most relevant topics for this thesis work For a more in depth information about the weather system see 3 3 1 System Server The weather system server is an ordinary computer running Windows server 2008 11 dedicated for saving data from the weather station The server is located on the ceiling of Building B and houses the weather system database web services and a website 3 2 Weather Modbus Service A Modbus application is used for the communication between the weather station and the database running on the system server The application is created using LabVIEW 12 and utilises the Modbus TCP IP protocol for the communication across the school network Modbus is a communication protocol p
9. WeatherDatalD WEATHER_PARAMETER Section FK1 WeatherParameterlD Key PK WeatherParameterlD MeasurementValue Value Description MeasurementDateTime ParameterName LocalDateTime Unit Source ItemUrl ModbusRegister ModbusAddress USER_PASSWORD UserPasswordiD FORECAST DATA PK ForecastDatalD Description Password FK1 UserlnfolD ModelParameterlD FK1 WeatherModellD LastName FK2 WeatherParameterlD EmployeeNumber reine re rosso PhoneNumber Address WeatherModellD PostalCode FK2 WeatherParameterlD City FK3 ModelParameterlD DeviceName DEVICE_PARAMETER WEATHER_MODEL PK WeatherModellD ModelName UserName FirstName Gain i Offset ForecastID WeatherParameterlD ForecastValue USER_INFO ForecastDateTime Px userinfoiD Description i PK DeviceParameterlD FK1 WeatherParameterlD FK2 DevicelD Figure 3 4 E R diagram for the weather system 3 Rating UserInfolD 3 3 2 SQL Structure Query Language The weather data are stored and retrieved from the database using SQL SQL is a database computer language designed for managing data in relational database management systems 17 Users or external applications can communicate with a database to store view or retrieve data using SQL queries Queries are basically a set of statements or commands that can be executed on a database SQL query gt Figure 3 5 SOL 18 The most common SQL s
10. a table for storing weather parameters and their attributes Each row represents a weather parameter such as wind speed temperature and rainfall Information related to these parameters such as their name unit and description are stored in the columns Primary key to uniquely identify each record WeatherParameterlD Unit Source ModbusRegister Description records 1 m umtLastMeas Time Timestamp Modbus 1 Time of last measurement a 2 umtWindSpeed m s Modbus Wind speed 3 3 umt Raw Wind Dir 3 Modbus 9 Wind direction unadjusted 4 umtAdj Win Dir Modbus 13 Wind direction 5 5 umt Rel Humidity x Modbus 17 Relative humidity 6 6 umtRawBaromPress hPa Modbus 21 Barometric pressure unadjusted 7 Fi umt djBaromFress hPa Modbus 25 Barometric pressure Figure 3 2 WEATHER_PARAMETER table A relational database usually consists of multiple tables that are connected together with primary and foreign keys The primary keys are usually stored in the first column of a table and they are used to uniquely identify each record On the other hand foreign keys are used to reference a specific record in another table As an example Figure 3 2 shows the table that stores information about all the weather parameters in the database The record in row 2 represents wind speed and its columns shows the primary keys WeatherParameterID its name unit source and description Figure 3 3 shows another table where measurement data delivered by
11. bottom of the screen 5 5 CH The C pronounced C sharp programming language used during this thesis work is a fully object oriented programming language created by Microsoft specially to work with the NET Framework 45 The C programming language combines the best features of the programming languages Delphi Eiffel C C Java while avoiding their problems 46 as illustrated in Figure 5 9 Figure 5 9 C is a combination of the best of other programming languages 46 5 6 XAML XAML pronounced Zamel is an XML based declarative markup language developed by Microsoft 32 XAML is a powerful tool that can be used to create rich user interfaces similar to HTML and CSS however XAML offers other utilities such as animations XAML was introduced with Windows Vista and have since had great success with Windows Presentation Foundation W PF and Silverlight applications One of the advantages with XAML 1s that it divides the application development process into a design part and a coding part The designers of an application can create the full user interface with XAML using designer tools such as Blend 42 and pass it over to the programmers The programmers can then do all the logic coding and connect input output data to the controls defined in XAML design such as textblocks buttons and textboxes Textblocks are used to display data while textboxes are used to read input data from the user 38 5 7 Splash Screen Windows 8 di
12. has elapsed 50 Main page Display loaded data Start timer 1 10s Start timer 2 3 min Flip max min field Restart timer 2 Get new data Timer 1 elapsed No A cover button is clicked Timer 2 elapsed Yes Navigate to the selected page Figure 7 5 Timers used in the main page Yes The main page has also 8 transparent buttons that are placed on top each weather parameter so that the users can navigate to the other pages The buttons are made large so that they are easy to use on touch screens Figure 7 6 shows where the buttons are placed Dynamic image Transparent cover buttons Ps Miras Telemark University College Wind speed Wind direction Air pressure oe 315 450 23th May iy 2709 909 225 EN x Porsgrunn a Y 1 3 m s 343 1 1008 6 hPa Pu Rainfall Humidity Wind chill Mid gt y bs d g 4 oe 7 126 C 4 Max values last week Min values last week Temperature Wind speed Air pressure Rainfall Temperature Wind speed Air pressure Rainfall 25 C 9 m s 1013 6 hPa 12 2 mm 2 8 C 0 m s 991 3 hPa 0 mm Last update 29 05 2013 16 12 55 Figure 7 6 Main page on a rainy day 51 As explained earlier in section 7 2 the background image for the App is set by the extended splash screen according to the weather conditions Similarly a dynamic image has been implemented in the main page for showing if the weather is sunny cloudy rain
13. or by contacting the author of this report at 10760 student hit no Appendix A Appendix B Appendix C Appendix D Appendix E Appendix F Appendix G Appendix H Appendix I Appendix J Appendix K Appendix L Task Description Mobile Platforms Creating Windows Store Apps Draft of the App How to get a Windows Store Developer Account How to Create Live Tiles How to create a C Web Service using Microsoft Visual Studio Photos of the Implemented App Updated E R Diagram Submitting Apps to Windows Store Using Data Dashboard for LabVIEW in Windows 8 Sideloading Windows Store Apps 67
14. the elements to be displayed 32 The frame can then drag the selected page containing various graphical elements and display it on the screen The page to be displayed can be selected by the user or from the App code The frame loads one page at a time and displays it on the screen As the user navigates between pages the frame will maintain a back stack of the visited pages so the users can navigate backwards and forwards in the same way as for websites A graphical illustration of this concept is displayed in Figure 5 7 Displayed on screen Figure 5 7 Page navigation 36 5 4 App Lifecycle Windows 8 has a new application lifecycle management system for Windows Store Apps Traditionally the user has been in control of the application lifecycle by launching and closing them The problem with this approach has been that applications would continue to run until they are closed by the users The applications would continue and have full access to the disk network and CPU resources even when they are not running in the foreground If multiple applications were running in the background it could affect the performance of the application being used as well as the battery lifetime 32 With Windows 8 focusing highly on mobile devices such as tablets Microsoft has implemented an intelligent system for the lifecycle of Windows Store Apps With the new system the Apps can have the three states not running running or suspended as shown in Fig
15. 3 different images has been prepared to describe the weather type while 96 images has been prepared for displaying the wind direction The App reads the image names from the XML 93 file locates the images and displays them on the page as shown in Figure 7 9 under the Forecast column and Wind information column The forecast data displayed on the page contains both short term and long term weather forecast AM PS A A Weather Forecast Telemark University College Weather forecast from yr no delivered by the Norwegian Meteorological Institute and the NRK Time Forecast Temperature Rainfall Wind information Today 03 00 06 00 0 mm Light breeze 1 6 m s from Northwest Today 06 00 12 00 Light air 1 2 m s from North northeast Today 12 00 18 00 gt Light breeze 3 1 m s from South southeast Today 18 00 00 00 A Light air 1 5 m s from West Tomorrow 00 00 06 00 Fat Moderate breeze 6 1 m s from Northwest ns a Tamarraw NANN INN Gontla htaa7a 2 8 m c fran Nari Figure 7 9 Forecast page 7 6 Live Tile The live tiles was implemented to make the app tile alive and animated instead of using a static icon The App receives 5 new tile updates every 30 minutes using periodic notifications as discussed in section 5 2 3 The updates are retrieved from the weather SDK web service and the following five functions were implemented in the web service for the live tiles e GetLatestMeasurem
16. AQ 9191 Data Display The NI cDAQ 9191 Data Display is another interesting App from National Instruments that can be used to take wireless measurements from the portable data acquisition device NI cDAQ 9191 39 NI cDAQ 9191 is a portable data acquisition device Using the Data Display App makes it possible for engineers to connect a tablet directly to the NI cDAQ 9191 via Wi Fi infrastructure or an ad hoc W1 Fi network 20 This gives the possibility to bring a tablet to the field as shown in Figure 4 9 and take measurements Figure 4 9 Data Display 38 31 5 Windows Store Apps The Windows Store Apps are designed specifically for the modern UI interface and they are created using Windows Runtime WinRT 40 Windows runtime can be seen as a subset of the traditional Win32 API 41 that most applications in previous Windows version where built on The new runtime illustrated in Figure 5 1 limits the resource access and sandboxes the Windows Store Apps for better stability and security It also offers developers a multi language programming environment where Windows Store Apps can be written in the following languages e C with XAML e Visual Basic with XAML e C with DirectX e JavaScript with HTML CSS Where XAML HTML CSS and DirectX can be used for creating the design and graphics while C Visual Basic C and JavaScript can be used for writing the logic behind the Apps Windows Store Apps can only be installed through W
17. K includes a general web service for data access over the internet Weather data such as current observations trends and forecast data are presented on a website for display on TV screens or computers Furthermore a Data Dashboard application was created for monitoring the weather data on iPad tablets An overview of the Weather System in Telemark University College is shown in Figure 1 1 For more information about the implemented weather system see 3 IPad tablet A Weather y va Building C a Building B me mannan Weather Data Fpyes Weather ies MODBUS C LabVIEW EN ATI OPC clients MATLAB Python Python Figure 1 1 Weather System 1 2 Objective The main objective of this work is to design and develop a Windows Store App for measurements and monitoring The work will focus on creating a draft from scratch and implement a native application using C and XAML The application will retrieve data from the weather system using a web service in the Weather SDK for communication Therefore the installed weather system will be studied and custom modifications will be implemented Current observations trends and forecast data will be presented on the application The final version of the application will be tested and deployed on Windows Store Since the new operating system is more mobile than previous versions the use of mobile platforms for measurement monitoring and control will also be studied The functionalities of the Da
18. Masters Thesis 2013 Candidate Ahmed Gurhan Title Design and Development of Windows Store Application for Measurements and Monitoring Telemark University College Faculty of Technology Kj lnes 3914 Porsgrunn Norway Lower Degree Programmes M Sc Programmes Ph D Programmes TFver 0 9 gt l lt gt Y TOP Telemark University College Faculty of Technology M Sc Programme MASTER S THESIS COURSE CODE FMH606 Student Ahmed Gurhan Thesis title Design and Development of Windows Store Application for Measurements and Monitoring Signature th ited Ke hrs aaa di Number of pages 67 Keywords C Web Service Windows 8 Windows Store App Weather System Telemark University College Weather System Weather Mobile Platforms XAML Supervisor Hans Petter Halvorsen sign asch eae an oe ni denen nee wee wats 2 Supervisor SII O Hea te ea Censor A ose oe a ee ee External partner SIC asa were ne eee age Availability Open Archive approval supervisor signature sign 6 eee Dit oa Abstract The apparatus and technical implementations used to measure and monitor weather parameters combined with the mathematical models used to predict the weather makes a weather system perfect for education and research in many areas Telemark University College has therefore bought a weather station for research and educational activities A weather system is built around this weather station for monitoring presenti
19. SSED Performance suspend Direct3D feature level support PASSED Properties test Windows security features test PASSED Direct3D feature level support App manifest resources test oe AA App Capabilities test Supported API test PASSED App resources validation PASSED Special Use Capabilities PASSED Supported APIs Figure 9 1 WACK test passed 9 2 Deployment The App was successfully deployed in Windows Store after passing all the tests in the Windows Store App Certification Kit The App can now be downloaded freely directly from the store in the modern UI The App can easily be found in the store by searching Telemark University College Telemark Porsgrunn weather etc Figure 9 2 shows the result of searching Telemark University College in the store For more details about the deployment see the tutorial Submitting Apps to Windows Store in Appendix J Results for telemark university college app Telemark University College We AA K K News amp Weather Free Figure 9 2 App search The App can also be viewed and installed from a web browser as shown in Figure 9 3 More information about this can be found in the Weather System website e http home hit no hansha weather htm 88 Windows Store Telemark University College Weather System Overview Details a TOP Ate No rating Telemark University College Wind speed a 24th April Fre bite Porsgrunn View in Windows Store
20. TING AND IDEPEOY MEN Dias 59 9 1 Windows Store App Certification Kit WACK TeSt ccccccccccccsssssesecccceceaeessseecceeesaaaseseeceeeesaeeseeeeeas 59 De PONM alada 60 PART V SUMMARY sera eea aa cei aa a a ea tisoes 61 10 DISCUSSIONS eee cil lloc 62 10 1 P E IN ET A E A II o ro O y O O 62 VAL SUMMAR riada 63 12 REFERENCES oia 64 PARTVT APPENDICES cuca acca assesses cade here ll dee eee adele 66 SS ALPES 67 Preface This master thesis report is written as part of the requirements for the award of a Master of Science M Sc degree in Systems and Control Engineering at Telemark University College Hggskolen I Telemark The report covers the process of designing and developing a Windows Store App for Measurements and Monitoring The report is aimed at readers with some programming knowledge however the level of code details is kept to a minimum and replaced with flowcharts and figures The entire work has been carried out within the campus of Telemark University College Some of the necessary data s needed has been acquired from the previous project Design and Implementation of Weather System for Acquiring and Monitoring of Weather Data 3 fall 2012 at Telemark University College I would like to thank my supervisor Hans Petter Halvorsen at the Faculty of Technology in Telemark University College who has always been within reach to provide guidance throughout the duration of the thesis work Porsgrunn Ahmed Gurhan
21. and the first page is a login page with username and password control as illustrated in the flowchart The usernames and passwords are stored on the database in the tables USER PASSWORD and USER_INFO The entered username and password are sent to the database using a new function named AddNews in the web service This function calls a stored procedure with the same name that checks if the username and password combination 1s correct The user teacher will be navigated to a page named Information page if the combination is correct otherwise he would have to retry In the information page the user will get a table showing all the information s stored in the NEWS table The user will also be able to add new information or select an old information to edit or delete it Figure 7 12 show how new information s can be added from the website 96 lk 9 PS E Welcome Ahmed Log Out la INTE Tae if i Telemark University College Home Add info Title Master thesis Start date 2013 06 05 End date 2013 06 05 Description The deadline for thesis delivery 5 June 2013 Submit Cancel Figure 7 12 Add new information Figure 7 13 shows the information page displaying all the information s stored in the NEWS table Atk Fi ET ree Welcome Ahmed Log Out la ET i i A 1 A i Telemark University College Home Title Author Description Start time End time Sele
22. as 7 5 For more information about this procedure see 3 MaxMin Value Unit Measurement Date Time 7 5 C 1 Artemperature 7 5 2013404 00 00 00 000 Result from the procedure Figure 3 7 Stored procedure result 3 4 Weather SDK The weather system has also a weather SDK which is basically a collection of functions written in the programming languages Python MATLAB LabVIEW and C The SDK has inbuilt database calls using the stored procedures This allows client applications written in the supported programming languages to use the functions in the SDK as building blocks that takes care of all the database communications The SDK serves as an interface for communicating with the weather system Figure 3 8 shows a graphical of overview of the weather SDK 20 MATLAB Python Weather SDK Figure 3 8 Weather SDK The functions in the weather SDK performs various operations to serve the external applications with the weather data they need Some of these functions are complex and consist of large amount of codes However the external applications need only to know how to use them Table 3 3 shows the functions used during this thesis work and their description Table 3 3 Weather SDK functions Functions GetWeatherParameters Ex data GetWeatherParameters GetLatestData parameterName GetLatestData umtTempl GetDaily Average parameterName Ex GetDailyAverage umtTempl
23. ature exposed on body due to a varying wind speed and this temperature is always lower than the air temperature 49 The maximum and minimum measured values are loaded for yesterday last week and last month All the loaded data are saved into an array defined as a global variable so they would be available for all the other pages in the App MIRATE Telemark University College Figure 7 3 Extended splash screen After loading all the weather data the App navigates to the Main page meaning that the Main page is set to the frames current active page as discussed in section 7 1 Since the extended splash screen is just a regular page that imitates as a splash screen this means that users are able to navigate back to this page as discussed in section 5 3 This was not wanted as the extended splash screen should only run during start up In order to avoid this a new frame is create inside the extended splash screen that can house the App pages The Main page will then be the first page of the App and the users will not be able to navigate further back to the extended splash screen 48 In addition to loading weather data the extended splash screen is also used to load the background image for the whole App The background image is made dynamic so it will change according to the weather This has been accomplished by implementing a new function in the Weather SDK web service named GetBackgroundImage This function uses the late
24. biaweather com products weather monitoring microserver I Columbia Weather Systems Self Aspirating Radiation Shield 2010 I Columbia Weather Systems 2013 Capricorn 2000EX Weather Station Available http www columbiaweather com products weather stations fixed mount capricorn 2000ex weather station W Underground Weather Underground 2013 A Weather Anything Weather 2013 C W O Program Citizen Weather Observer Program 2013 Microsoft 2012 Windows Server 2008 Available http technet microsoft com en us windowsserver bb310558 aspx N Instruments 2012 LabVIEW Available http sine ni com np app main p docid nav 104 lang no M Organization 2013 Modbus Organization Available http www modbus org specs php N O Skeie Industrial Information Technology 2012 Microsoft 2010 Introduction to Windows Service Applications Available http msdn microsoft com en us library d56de412 v vs 80 aspx W S Group 2013 Web service Available http 128 39 35 252 WebApi WebService asmx H P HALVORSEN Structured Query Language 2012 Microsoft 2013 ZIS Available http www 11s net Wikipedia 2013 Web service Available http en wikipedia org wiki Web_service N Instruments 2013 Smartphones and Tablets for Measurement and Control Available http zone ni com devzone cda pub p id 1387 Wikipedia 2013 JOS Available http en wikipedia org wiki Ios Apple 2013
25. bilities for content creation on tablets The release of Windows 8 changes this The fact that a full scale operating system now can run on tablets opens enormous possibilities This means that a tablet now can do almost everything an ordinary computer can do In addition the tablet offers portability and a touch oriented environment Windows 8 also introduced new type of applications called Windows Store Apps that runs on the new user interface modern UI This report contains the design and development of a Windows Store App for measurements and monitoring using the weather system installed in Telemark University College 1 1 Previous Work As mentioned earlier a student project was carried out to implement a system for monitoring presenting and acquiring data from the new weather station The implemented system is built around a custom made database system for logging weather data The database system 1s installed on a server in building B of the campus in Porsgrunn The communication between the database and the weather station in building C is established over the school network An important part of the project was to make the weather data available for students and teachers in various formats The implemented system therefore contains an OPC server for live weather data retrieval within the school network The systems also contains a Weather SDK allowing external applications access to the stored weather data The Weather SD
26. c Scheduled and Push Notifications ooooccccnnnnnnnonnnnnnnnnnnnnannnnnnnnnnnnnannncnnnnnnonanacinnnnnnns 33 32l Ocal Noticia a 34 5 2 2 Scheduled IN AAA II NR RR din at nina asia tama 34 5 23 PERO TEN OLMOS AAA AA AA dle 35 5 2 4 CUSCO O tots 35 y APP PALES ANG AN OVINA A AAA A AAA ciated tacit 36 o ADP VAC CVC C seis hertns ada E vita atutetantei atin ann arate ee auntie ne esa eee asa 37 So alms OL nt Or eT PSN A A A AAA 38 IO AM sca sale A Aa ee La omen 38 Dil II PLENAS ES A AA 39 5 8 Windows App Store Certification Kit WACK cccccccssecccccccccecsesseccececcaaeseseeceeeeeaaeeeeeeceesuaaseeeeeeeseaaaes 39 PART lll ANALYSIS AND REQUIREMENTS ccccsssssssssssssscccsssssccccccscsscscssssssssccsssssoosssscsssssssscccessss 40 6 PINAY SIS ANID REOUIREMENTS aa a a a 4 O REIU NECS aid in dacuauubind senandeosashiheoial a 4 02 Graphical ser Inte o biz 42 6 2 1 SA E E SA 43 6 2 2 MIMO coa DU 44 6 2 3 AAA RR IR RR E E A E NN NE 44 PARTIV IMPLEMENTATION TESTING AND DEPLOY MENT onnmmmniiiii 45 7 IMPLEMENTA TION coses 46 LE APP Tager ARENOSOS do 47 TZ EXTONACAS PLISADAS SAA AAA AAA 48 HS IMAN ARA aa 49 REE WE DER LLENAS ASES A Sl 32 7 4 1 WOR AAMO TOOK een nen eee NR II emer E Te man Tyee 53 TDs VS SL O EEE eesti se taint ote RO silos icant ensues subenduso buses tien toss Meese 53 AO EVA a rere ARA AA o 54 Tod ASPEN EL WES O A A ETO Rise 93 8 USING DATA DASHBOARD ON WINDOWS Si A ey EOE 58 9 TES
27. cribing when they should appear Windows takes care of the rest whether the app is running or not the tile will be updated at the scheduled time The maximum number of notifications that an app can scheduled are 4096 4 Figure 5 4 illustrates the process of scheduled notifications Running app Scheduled notification API 3 o d Porsgrunn Godt 3 e 3 5 System process Figure 5 4 Scheduled notifications 34 5 2 3 Periodic Notifications Periodic notifications are used to update the tiles in a fixed interval by downloading new content from a web service During each interval the operating sends a HTTP GET request to a web service URI Uniform Resource Identifier which is basically just the web service address The web service then returns an XML file containing the tile updates Windows downloads this file and updates the App tile 3 This is illustrated in Figure 5 5 The interval frequency is minimum 30 minutes Running app URI HTTP Request SI Porsgrunn Tile amp Badge ee Updater API VWI System process Figure 5 5 Periodic notifications 5 2 4 Push Notifications With push notifications the information is pushed to the App tile without any update requested from the operating system All the app need to do 1s to establish a WNS Windows Push Notification Service channel first time its launched on a given device the channel address URI is then sent to a web service When the web serv
28. ct Exam Ahmed Gurhan Industria Information Technology 24 May 2013 2013 05 24 2013 05 24 Select Maste thesis Ahmed Gurhan Thesis delivery 5 June 2013 2013 06 05 2013 06 05 Add info Edit info Delete info Figure 7 13 The information page on the website 97 8 Using Data Dashboard on Windows 8 The Data Dashboard for LabVIEW App was also tested on Windows 8 during this thesis work The Data Dashboard discussed in section 4 5 1 was downloaded freely from Windows Store and connected to the Weather System web service as illustrated in Figure 8 1 The tutorial Using Data Dashboard for LabVIEW in Windows 8 in Appendix K shows step by step how to connect a Data Dashboard App to the Weather System at Telemark University College TUC Weather System 11 9611 8 41412 Temperature Windchill WindDir Windspeed Figure 8 1 Data Dashboard Main page 98 9 Testing and Deployment The App was developed using the development process discussed in section 6 Following this development process the App was tested in several iterations to meet all the criteria s described in the Windows Store certification guidelines 48 The Windows Store App Certification Kit WACK discussed in section 5 8 was also used to test the App before deployment to Windows Store Reading about the most common certification failures 52 to avoid these has also been a major help in the process of meeting the certification criteria s Microsoft also performs se
29. deployment Testing the App with this software is therefore very important as it reduces the chances for failing the tests performed by Microsoft The software returns error reports that guides the users to find errors or code structure that does not meet the criteria s for a Windows Store App certification requirements 48 39 Part III Analysis and Requirements 6 Analysis and Requirements The development process during this thesis work consisted of several phases First a lot of time was used to learn about Windows Store Apps and the process of developing such Apps Then requirements for the App was collected to a have a clear goal and understanding of how the App should be implemented A draft of the graphical user interface was then designed before implementing the App The App was then tested and deployed in Windows Store These steps were repeated in several iterations as illustrated in Figure 6 1 until the final release of the App Deployment Figure 6 1 Development process 46 6 1 Requirements The requirements are the specifications for the App and they were used in all the phases of the development such as design implementation testing and deployment The FURPS acronym has been used as a systematic approach of collecting the requirements The following requirements were collected for the App Functional Get weather data from the weather system database Display the latest values of the most importan
30. dio 2012 The final version of the App has been deployed in Windows Store and can now be downloaded freely This report contains documentations of the requirements gathering analyses implementation and deployment of the App Telemark University College accepts no responsibility for results and conclusions presented in this report Table of Contents PREFA C A cess NEE saves cadet E E ENS 5 NOMENCLATURE 0 ea AA E I E A E R 6 PARTE OVERVIEW oerien a aaa Ea Oa Ea deN EE 7 1 A a 8 PT APRECIO OS WO da A os 9 O A E OU O 10 dad REPOS CIVIC rad eals Il 2 SYSTEM DESCRIP TION ai 12 Zid Wehen STANOIU STA AA a 12 ZA 1 he Control Module EA A e 13 ZN 2 SMS OLS SEDAN AIN RAE AAA EA ISA OO 13 2 1 3 Weather A A 14 3 WEATHER SYSTEM PROJIEO ici e arian 15 IA SVENO IVEN AAA 15 La Weather Mod Das Servei da dadas 15 LS Weather SUS ten DOTADAS Citi dd lid Ds 16 Il ERD ia Eos 11 eaaa A O 17 32 SOT ASU Ct re DUES Eneida e iene 18 DS Stored EOC COU CS dd ai aia ANO AN ias 19 Bets MENA as nae 20 3 4 1 Weather Sy stent Web Serv CC ico tddi 22 PART Il A O 24 4 A PIAITTORM S geese toh cactasa sen a E a concen 25 Bd WOVEN V IOW AS nada 29 ED OE A 26 A AMOO A ad Zi AR WVU OW SO a asm aaa tessa Caen wea a ARGS ENA GEES 28 A ADOS VOM TCI CO hearse Sos Paci eae a eee et a eee 29 4 5 1 Data Dashboard tor LabVIEW spin A A 30 4 5 2 NECDAQ O19 T Data DISPO A E a 31 5 WINDOWS STORE APPS soto noia iii 32 A RE 33 5 2 Local Periodi
31. e number of Apps in Google Play 27 has now passed the number of Apps in Apple s App Store The apps are increasing in such ratio that it s predicted the 1 million milestone will be reached by June 2013 28 Figure 4 3 Android logo 29 Android apps are developed in Java and Google provides an ADT bundle for developers 30 The bundle includes e Eclipse IDE ADT plug in e Android SDK Tools e Android Platform tools e The latest Android platform e The latest Android system image for the emulator The emulator is a virtual mobile device for testing and analysis of apps Google has also announced a new IDE name Android Studio that 1s more powerful than the ADT bundle The Android studio is at the writing moment available just as an early version 31 27 4 4 Windows 8 In order to catch up with Apple s 10S and Google s Android on the mobile platform market Microsoft put a lot work in their new operating system named Windows 8 Windows 8 represents the biggest change in Microsoft s operating system since Windows 95 32 The new operating system has been designed with high focus on tablets and touch screens Microsoft released the following versions of Windows 8 e Windows 8 Windows 8 pro Windows 8 enterprise e Windows RT a8 Windows 8 Figure 4 4 Windows 8 logo 33 All the Windows 8 versions except Windows RT can run on desktop PCs laptops and tablets Windows RT is a new type of operating system that is only available p
32. e users to a desktop similar to the desktop in previous Windows versions The introduction of the modern UI and Windows Store Apps has made the new operating system faster and more mobile Also the fact that Windows 8 and Windows 8 pro can run on tablets opens enormous possibilities for using tablets in the field Recently British Telecom BT announced that they will equip 5900 field engineers with Windows 8 tablets 36 and the company also plans to create several Apps to increase engineers productivity in the field 4 5 Apps for Engineers Major companies in the field of measurements monitoring and control such National Instruments 37 are now offering Apps for tablets and smartphones National Instruments has released the following Apps e Data Dashboard for LabVIEW in Android IOS and Windows 8 e NIcDAQ 9191 Data Display Android and IOS 29 4 5 1 Data Dashboard for LabVIEW National Instruments Data Dashboard for LabVIEW is an App that can communicate with applications developed in LabVIEW 38 The App provides the possibilities to view live measurement data and send control signals back to these applications This way engineers can use a tablet as a portable HMI for remotely viewing and controlling systems The engineers can also view trends historical data or receive alarms from the system As shown in Figure 4 7 applications are first built in LabVIEW LabVIEW is a development environment from National instruments that
33. ent tree is shown below The following operations are supported For a formal definition please review the Service Description v lt CustomArrayOfData xmlns xsd http www w3 org 2001 XMLSchema GetBackgroundImage xmlns xsi http www w3 org 2001 XMLSchema instance coi a ie dl This function takes a parameter name as input and returns v lt array0fValue gt daily average for the past 30 days Example lt double gt 9 7 lt double gt GetDailyAverage umtTemp1 lt double gt 7 9 lt double gt GetFirstTile lt double gt 6 2 lt double gt ER lt double gt 7 8 lt double gt eo GetHourlyAverage lt double gt 9 lt double gt This function takes a parameter name as input and returns lt double gt 8 7 lt double gt hourly average for the past 24 hours Example c ombles7 0 lt dobles GetHourlyAverage umtTemp 1 Giant tenias oubl U IS upi e GetLatestData lt double gt 11 6 lt double gt This function takes a parameter name as input and returns lt double gt 12 3 lt double gt its latest recorded data Example GetLatestData umtTemp1 ee POS e GetMaxMin lt double gt 10 1 lt double gt GetMaxMin string parameterName string period string mode lt double gt 7 6 lt double gt This function takes a parameter name period and mode max lt double gt 5 8 lt double gt or min as input and returns the maximum or a tdoihiesTe sc hles lt double gt 5 7 lt double gt y Figure 3 10 Web service example The
34. ents Mobile Technology for Measurement and Control 2013 N Instruments 2013 NICDAO 9191 Available http sine ni com nips cds view p lang no nid 2 10045 Microsoft 2013 Windows API reference for Windows Store apps Available http msdn microsoft com en us library windows apps br2 1 1377 aspx Microsoft 2012 Windows API Available http en wikipedia org wiki Windows_API Microsoft 2013 Blend Available http msdn microsoft com en us library windows apps j 129478 aspx Microsoft ASP NET 2013 Microsoft Manage app lifecycle and state 2013 Wikipedia 2012 NET Framework Available http en wikipedia org wiki NET_Framework N O Skeie Object Oriented Analysis Design and Programming using UML and C 2012 Microsoft 2013 Windows App Certification Kit Available http msdn microsoft com en us library windows apps hh69408 aspx Microsoft 2013 Windows 8 app certification requirements Available http msdn microsoft com en us library windows apps hh694083 aspx Wikipedia Wind chill 2013 F Skakun WinRT XAML Toolkit 2012 Microsoft Nuget 2013 Microsoft 2013 common certification failures Available http msdn microsoft com en us library windows apps j657968 aspx 53 H P Halvorsen Software Development Process 2013 65 Part VI Appendices 13 Appendices The Appendices and the codes can be found in the CD that has been included in this report
35. ents This function returns latest temperature rainfall wind speed and wind direction measurements stored in the Weather System database e GetMaxMinData This function returns the maximum and minimum temperature values stored in the Weather System database for yesterday and last week e GetYrData This function returns forecast data from yr no e GetFirstInfo This function returns 1 short information or news from the School The function returns the information that has the closest publishing date This will be discussed more in section 7 7 e GetSecondInfo This function returns a second short information or news from the School 54 The App registers the notifications during start up and sets the update frequency The operating system then takes care of getting 5 new tile updates from the weather SDK web service every 30 minutes Since the App only has one wide tile and one square tile it will cycle through the 5 updates showing one at a time The space in the square tiles limits the amount of information that can be displayed on it therefore only the latest temperature is displayed on this tile The wide tile can display all the information s returned from the web service functions and also a small picture that describes the current weather Figure 7 10 shows how the live tiles for the App can look like The figure shows the 5 updates that can be displayed on the wide tiles and how the square tile displays only the latest temperatu
36. erature sensor e Relative humidity sensor e Solar radiation sensor e Rain gauge sensor The control module and the Weather MicroServer are both located indoor while most of the sensors are located at the roof of building C in Telemark University College campus Porsgrunn A technical overview of the weather station system is shown in Figure 2 2 Wind speed Wind direction Temperature 5 Humidity fo gt Solar 4 radiation L Figure 2 2 Technical overview of the weather station system The sensors located outdoor are wind speed wind direction solar radiation rain gauge relative humidity and temperature sensor The wind direction and wind speed sensors are combined into a single sensing unit while the humidity and temperature sensor are both place inside a self aspiration radiation shield 6 to improve the accuracy to a maximum 2 1 1 The Control Module The Capricorn 2000EX weather station consisting of the control module and the sensors is designed around the control module The module is a simple embedded system that can communicate with a computer a monitor a wireless transceiver or a modem via two RS 232 ports The module includes a data logger that can store up to 311 records at user defined intervals with time stamp 7 2 1 2 Sensors Table 2 1 shows an overview of the sensors included in the Capricorn 2000EX weather station The sensors are connected directly to the control module in raw format
37. erent programming languages or different operating systems can exchange data The data sent across the internet is represented in the standard XML format The XML data containing information request or response are packed into a uniform format by the SOAP protocol and transported over the internet via the HTTP protocol Figure 3 9 shows a graphical overview of the web service communication for the weather system database and the underlying protocols External applications Lab VIEW MATLAB Python Figure 3 9 Weather system web service 22 The weather system web service exposes a set of functions for the external applications These functions are activated when an application calls them to a function They performs a set of operations using the stored procedures and returns data to the calling application Figure 3 10 shows an example use of the function named GetDailyAverage shown on the left side of the figure When this function is called it performs a set of operations to return the average measurement values for the last 30 days The right side of the figure shows some of the XML data returned by the function The external application can then extract all the important information from the XML data 3 C A O 128 39 35 252 WebApi WebService as amp 3 C fi DO 128 39 35 252 WebApi WebService as amp Y gt This XML file does not appear to have any style information We bServi ce associated with it The docum
38. essure gauge The animation runs constantly and it s not connected to any measurement data e Wind speed animation This animation shows a wind socket in motion to simulate wind speed change The animation runs constantly and it s not connected to any weather data 49 TOP AE Telemark University College Wind speed Wind direction Air pressure 29th May Di gt l z J Porsgrunn 1 8 m s 337 5 1008 6 hPa Rainfall Humidity Wind chill A os oa 12 5 C i Max values last week Min values last week Wind speed Air pressure Rainfall Temperature Wind speed Air pressure Rainfall eo ha mm m mm A 1013 6 hPa a l ve Figure 7 4 Main page All the animations were created from scratch using XAML and Blend The animations are then controlled with the C code Figure 7 5 shows a flow chart showing the most important parts of the main page As shown in the flow chart the data loaded by the extended splash screen is first displayed Two timers are then started timer 1 lasting 10 seconds and timer 2 lasting 3 minutes Timer 1 is used to flip between the maximum and minimum values displayed on the screen So that the maximum and minimum values for yesterday last week and last month are each displayed 10 seconds before the timer flips and shows the next one The second timer is used to update the latest weather data New data is retrieved from the Weather SDK web service and displayed when this timer
39. ic time period GetMax Min Gets max min measurement values Average Gets hourly average daily average etc The procedures are active in the weather system database and ready to be used As an example to get the minimum temperature value recorded last month we can use the GetMaxMin procedure This procedure takes a parameter name a period and max min as input data The procedure can be used with the following two steps e First finding the parameter name used to store temperature values e Executing the procedure Step 1 can be done with the following SELECT statement SE HE RROMTNWNEA INER TEARAMETER The statement returns all the weather parameters in the database and their attributes Temperature has the parameter name umtTemp1 as shown in Figure 3 6 _ WeatherParameteriD ParameterName Unit Source teml ModbusRegister 8 8 umt TrueNorthOtfset Modbus ope ocalhost Kepware KEPServerEx V5 Weather M 23 E 3 umtLastRain Timestamp Modbus ope localhost Kepware KEP ServerEx V5 Weather M 33 Last reported time of rainfall 0 Temp lt i i riga Airtemperature 14111 umt Windchill T Modbus ope ocalhost Kepware KEPServerEx V5 Weather M 41 Wind chill Figure 3 6 Stored procedure Knowing the parameter name the procedure can be executed as following EXECUTE GetMaxMin umtTempl lMonthAgo min The result from the procedure displayed in Figure 3 7 shows that the minimum temperature last month April 2013 w
40. ice has new updates for the app 1t can notify the WNS using the channel URI WNS receives the request and routes the notification to the device where the App is installed 5 With this notification form we can send new updates anytime they are available and we don t need wait for any interval like for the periodic notifications The process of push notifications is illustrated in Figure 5 6 35 Channel Running app gt request API Send channel to web service Send update 3 Porsgrunn a WNS 3 S Push updates to client tiles Figure 5 6 Push notifications 5 3 App Pages and Navigation Windows store apps are organised into pages similar to ASP NET 43 webpage s where each page consists of one file for the graphical user interface and one file called code behind where the logic is written As mentioned earlier XAML HTML CSS and DirectX can be used for the graphical user interface for Windows Store Apps while C Visual Basic C and JavaScript can be used for the logic XAML and C has been selected for the App development during this thesis work The pages in Windows Store Apps are hosted inside an App frame The frame which is an object is one of the first things created during App launch It houses all the pages and makes it possible to navigate between pages in the same way as for websites Each page created with XAML is first packed into a control called Page which is a visual container that holds all
41. indows Store or a through a technique called sideloading For more information about sideloading see the tutorial Sideloading Windows Store Apps in Appendix L Windows Store Apps Desktop Apps XAML HTML CSS CH JavaScript Gee VB Chakra HTML C JavaScript C WinRT APIs Communication Graphics amp Devices amp amp Data Media Printing Application Model internet Win32 Explorer Windows Core OS Services Figure 5 1 Windows runtime The requirements for developing and publishing Windows Store Apps are e Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 The new IDE has a lot of functionalities that makes it easier for developers to build test and deploy the apps in Windows Store Microsoft offers Visual Studio Express 2012 and Blend 42 for free e A developer license The license is free and can be acquired through Visual Studio or Microsoft s development center 2 for more information about developer license see Appendix C Creating Windows Store Apps e A Windows Store account To publish the apps in Windows Store e For a more detailed information about the process of creating Windows Store apps refer to Appendix C Creating Windows Store Apps 32 5 1 Live Tiles The live tiles is one of the major improvements of the new Windows and well designed live tiles can be very useful and attract the users to the App The live tiles has replaced the static App icons used in previous Windows versions and for ordinary desktop application
42. is known for its powerful and user friendly graphical programming environment Applications built in LabVIEW are well suited for measurement monitoring and control Often entire control systems can be built with LabVIEW applications these applications can publish controls or indicators through Shared Variables or Web Services The Data Dashboard App can then connect to these applications and display the published indicators or controls as a portable a view of the application built in LabVIEW a nnn ELabviEew PSN Figure 4 7 Data Dashboard 37 The Data Dashboard gives the engineers the possibility to build customised dashboards that can both control and monitor systems The engineers can also easily edit the layout and add customized themes for their Dashboard Figure 4 8 shows an example of how a Data Dashboard App can look like Several web service functions in the weather SDK are created specifically for Data Dashboard Apps and these were tested using Data Dashboard in Windows 8 during this thesis work See Appendix K for a tutorial showing how to use the Data Dashboard App in Windows 8 together with the weather SDK web service 30 JO PM Wind Turbine Analysis aL o Pad gt EL 2407 Data View t Turbina 2 Turbine 3 3 Turbine d ES 2 Turbine 5 D Wind Velo i PE a y 20 4D to s 101 Te Emergency Stop T z Y E E j Figure 4 8 Data dashboard example 38 4 5 2 NI cD
43. ng and acquiring weather data The system serves as a tool for many academic topics among these research around mathematical models to predict the weather in the near future within and around Porsgrunn community This thesis work is about the development of a Windows Store App that presents weather data from the weather station installed at Telemark University College Windows Store App is a new type of application that has been introduced with the new operating system from Microsoft named Windows 8 The Windows Store App was developed using the C programming language for the App logic while XAML has been used to create a modern and animated graphical user interface The weather data presented on the App is the latest measurement data max min data and trend data The data is presented using graphs and animations while the communication between the App and the weather system is achieved using a web service The App also presents forecast data from the Norwegian Metrological Institute MI The forecast data from MI is retrieved using a web service at yr no Live tile functionalities keeps the users updated even when the App is not running with the latest weather data forecast data and short information s from the school using periodic notifications An ASP NET website has also been developed to manage the information from the school that is displayed on the live tiles The development of the App and the ASP NET website was done using Microsoft Visual Stu
44. ositioned at level 7 of the OSI model It provides a client server communication between devices connected on different types of buses or networks 13 The protocol is based on request response methods and offers services specified by function codes Modbus is the most widely used network protocol in industrial manufacturing and can be implemented using Ethernet Modbus TCP IP or serial port Modbus RTU amp Modbus ASCID 14 Modbus TCP IP is used in the application for the weather system The application is installed as a Windows service 15 and runs round the clock saving new observations on the system server in building B New observations are measured and saved every 2 minutes Figure 3 1 shows a graphical overview of this process Read more about the Modbus application in 16 Weather station MODBUS TCP IP Figure 3 1 Modbus application 3 3 Weather System Database The weather system database runs 24 7 on the system server storing the incoming data from the Modbus application and serving the data to external applications The database is based on the relational database model and consists of 11 tables that are used to store current observations historical data trends and forecast data A relational database organizes the data into tables where each table 1s two dimensional and consists of columns and rows 14 Each row represents a record while the columns represents attributes of that record Figure 3 2 illustrates
45. platforms for engineers anywhere in the world or simply bring a light weight and easy to carry tablet to the field for making measurements tests and analysis The 3 major mobile platforms in the market for tablets today are e Apple s 10S e Google s Android e Microsoft s Windows 8 Windows RT These platforms has also brought application developers closer to the smart phone and tablet owners by offering web based software stores 25 The developers can publish their applications to App Store Google play or Windows Store This makes it easier for the users to simply find buy and install applications directly from their desktop 4 2105 The release of Apple s Phone with 10S operating system previously iPhone OS in 2007 was an instant success and have since had a great success in the mobile platform market with other Apple products as well 10S is now the operating system that runs on iPhone iPod touch Apple TV and iPad Devices 21 The OS is Apple s mobile version of the OS X operating system used in Apple computers Unlike Android and Windows 8 the iOS can only run on Apple devices Initially 1OS did not support third party applications Apps but the introduction of App Store and the release of iOS SDK in 2008 opened a huge market for developers to create and sell applications The App Store now contains over 775 000 apps January 2013 22 ranging from simple news apps to advanced engineering apps Figure 4
46. predict the weather makes a weather system perfect for education and research in many areas Telemark University College has therefore bought a weather station for research and educational activities from Colombia Weather Systems Inc 4 The weather station is installed in building C of the campus in Porsgrunn During fall of 2012 a group of students designed and implemented a weather system consisting of a server and various software applications for monitoring presenting and acquiring data from this weather station 3 The implemented system serves as a tool for many academic topics among these research around mathematical models to predict the weather in the near future within and around Porsgrunn community The data from the weather system is also of interest for the public in general to check the latest observations or the next day s forecast from the local weather station Therefore it s important to present the weather data in formats that are consistent with the latest trends in information technology Currently the new big thing is the release of Windows 8 from Microsoft The new operating system works both on ordinary computers as well as on tablets Tablets are today widely used because of their light weight size and fast operating system Their large touch screen makes them a preferred option in many situations and a perfect device for content consumption However the lack of powerful operating system has limited the possi
47. r pressure from yr no page trends page trends page trends page trends page Figure 7 2 Overview of the weather app The entry point of the App is its live tile which is displayed on the modern UI and clicking on it will start the App The App xaml cs file is the first code executed during App start up here a method named OnLaunched is automatically called during start up The code implemented inside this method can be divided into the following three main parts e Creating an App frame to house the pages as discussed in section 5 3 e Getting live tile updates and set update frequency to 30 minutes e Display the extended splash screen page by setting it as the frame s current active page A page is made visible on the screen when it has been set as the frame s current active page 7 2 Extended Splash Screen The extended splash screen page shows the school logo and an animated progress ring while retrieving data from the Weather SDK as shown Figure 7 3 This page was implemented to make the App more consistent by loading all the data for the main page before it s displayed for the user The weather SDK functions shown in Table 3 3 are used to load the following weather data e Latest measurements for temperature rainfall wind speed wind direction air pressure humidity and wind chill e Maximum and Minimum measured values for temperature rainfall wind speed and wind direction Where wind chill is the effective temper
48. re Max Min data Forecast data Yesterday Max 13 C Pot Today 17 00 18 00 Yesterday Min 5 C E 21 C Last Week Max 27 C Rainfall 0 mim Last Week Min 0 C Wind direction 176 9 7 Latest data TUC news Temperature 17 4 C Exam System Identification and Rainfall 0 mm Optimal Estimation 6 June 2013 Wind speed 1 8 m s Wind direction 157 5 TUC news O Maste thesis Thesis delivery 3 June 2013 Porsgrunn Figure 7 10 The live tiles 7 7 ASP NET Website The website is made in such way that teachers can log in and enter some short information or news that can be displayed on the live tiles as shown in Figure 7 10 The information added on the website is saved to the Weather System database in a new table named NEWS The App can then retrieve data from this table using the web service functions discussed in section 7 6 and display the data on two of the tiles See Appendix I for an updated version of the E R diagram discussed in section 3 3 1 95 The weather SDK web service is also used for the website communication and Figure 7 11 shows a flowchart demonstrating how the website and the database are connected TOR A ASP NET website Information page Web service Yes No Yes E k Delete info No Username amp Password correct Yes procedure Figure 7 11 Flowchart for the website The address of the website is http 128 39 35 252 InfoWebsite
49. re detailed trend pages For alternative main page click here The main page shows latest measurements for the most ee en ee M i important parameters all contains here aj p a n a e links to more detailed pages Currenttemperature and small picture Clickthere TUC weather Max Min values User can click to get a more Usethe app bar as Some animations for the detailed Max Min page Clickthere i different parameters Figure 6 4 Main page 6 2 3 Trends The pages for displaying weather trends was designed to have one page showing multiple small graphs where each graph had a hidden button on top Clicking the buttons would then open a new page with large graphs showing more details Wind speed Chart details Click on the charts tens This page shows trend data 24 hour 7 days month etc The page can have chart table option Clicking on the charts shows more details Figure 6 5 Trend pages 44 Part IV Implementation Testing and Deployment 7 Implementation The Windows Store App was implemented following the work done during the analyses and requirements gathering process In addition to this an ASP NET website was implemented to manage the information displayed in two of the live tiles The App and the website uses the web service in the weather SDK therefore some modifications was made on this web service during the implementation The weather App has also a forecast page for displaying weather
50. re trends last 24 hours The data displayed in the weather trend pages are retrieved from the Weather SDK web service using the functions shown in Table 3 3 GetHourlyAverage and GetDaily Average 7 4 1WinRT XAML Toolkit During the implementation I found out that Microsoft Visual studio 2012 does not have chart controls for Windows Store Apps however after some research I found that there exists many commercial chart controls in the market Most of these are quite expensive After some more research I found a great toolkit named WinRT XAML Toolkit 50 that contains many useful XAML controls among these some great chart controls that are easy to use The toolkit is Open source and free for everybody This toolkit was added to the App project using nuget 51 and 1s used in all the weather trend pages 7 5 Forecast Page The forecast page shown in Figure 7 9 displays the latest weather forecast data from the Norwegian Metrological Institute The data 1s retrieved using a web service from yr no The web service returns an XML file with large amount of various forecast data but only a small part of the data is extracted from the XML and displayed on the page The forecast data displayed on the page is temperature rainfall and various wind information s Images are also used to describe the weather type and wind direction These images are stored in the App folder and the XML file returned by yr no contains the names of the images to use 2
51. reinstalled on PCs and tablets that are powered by ARM processors 34 Windows RT is optimised for these devices and can only run built in applications or applications downloaded from Windows Store These applications are called Windows Store Apps or Windows 8 Apps 35 The Windows Store Apps works on regular Windows 8 versions as well These Apps will be discussed further in chapter 5 Figure 4 5 Windows 8 on pc laptop tablet 2 All the Windows 8 versions has the start screen shown in Figure 4 6 The new start screen 1s called modern UI and it contains colourful and dynamic tiles Tiles are basically the application icons in Windows 8 The tiles can display short information s from the apps living behind them instead of the static icons in previous Windows versions These tiles are also called live tiles as the Apps behind them can update their content with the latest updates 28 Only the Windows Store Apps has this functionality however the ordinary desktop applications are also present in the new start screen as static icons ahil A w Hovenga line Video TUC news National day National day on 17th of May a K Intemet Explorer tore 19 M Figure 4 6 Modern UI Since Windows RT only can run Windows Store Apps it does not have the traditional desktop and all the Apps can be accessed from the modern UI The other versions of Windows 8 has a desktop tile in the modern UI interface that takes th
52. s Windows Store Apps can have a square tile that can contain short information s and a wide tile that has more space for information Figure 5 2 show the wide tile and the square tile for the default weather App in Windows 8 189 Porsgrunn Godt ier Porsgrunn Godt 19 10 19 10 V r Figure 5 2 Wide and Square tiles By using these tiles the weather App can display the current weather on its tile while the news App can display the latest news This way the users gets all the important updates without opening each app and the users can then decide if they want to click on the tile to get more details from the App This can be very time saving when the user is writing a report or doing other important work on the computer All the user need to do is to press the Windows button and the modern UI will display all the Apps with their latest updates and within a couple of seconds the user has all the information he needs from each app and can decide whether he want to open an app or just press the Windows button to go back to work For more information about live tiles and how they can be implemented see the tutorial in Appendix F How to create live tiles 5 2 Local Periodic Scheduled and Push Notifications The tiles can receive new updates from web services even when the app is not running These updates are called notifications and there are local periodic scheduled and push notifications A notification update consis
53. s such as resistance voltage or capacitance All the sensors are factory calibrated to a high degree of accuracy For more details about the sensors see the weather station documentation in 7 13 Table 2 1 A technical overview of the sensors used in the weather system Temperature Digital semi 55 to 125 C 0 5 C 10 to 85 C 0 006 C conductor else 2 0 C Pressure Silicon shear 910 to 1150 hPa 1 hPa 0 to 83 3 C 0 3 hPa stress strain gauge Wind speed Sealed reed 0 to 71 5 m s 0 11 m s 0 to 10 m s 0 448 m s switch Rel Humidity 0 to 100 3 10 to 90 RH Rainfall Tipping bucket MO 1 up to 2 in hr 0 01 inch 2 1 3 Weather Microserver o The Weather MicroServer is a small self contained computer that runs on the Linux operating system It provides a weather monitoring system with a wide range of capabilities and services such as e FTP service that can save weather data to a user specified FTP server in XML or CSV format e XML web service that can publish weather data on the XML format e An Internet browser user interface e SNMP communication protocol e Modbus RTU and Modbus TCP IP communication protocols e Virus protection operating system upgrades and maintenance capabilities e Data logging capability that can save all the measurements from the control module to a CSV file very minute e Automatic data output to the Weather Underground 8 Anything Weather 9 and Citizen Weather
54. sed Chapter 6 Discusses the requirement gathering and analyses process prior to the implementation Chapter 7 Discusses the technical implementation of the App and a website created during this thesis work Chapter 8 Discusses how to use the Data Dashboard for LabVIEW App in Windows 8 to retrieve weather data from the weather system Chapter 9 Discusses the testing and deployment of the App created during this thesis work Chapter 10 Discussions and future work recommendations Chapter 11 Gives a summary of the work done during this thesis work 2 System Description In order to fully appreciate the work described in this report it 1s necessary to have a brief understanding of the weather station from Colombia weather systems This chapter will discuss and give an overview of the different parts in the weather station For a more detailed information about the weather station see 3 2 1 Weather Station System The weather station system from Colombia Weather Systems consists of a Capricorn 2000EX weather station 4 and a Weather MicroServer 5 The Capricorn 2000EX weather station includes a compact control module with an internal barometric pressure sensor that is part of the modules system board shown Figure 2 1 Figure 2 1 Control module s system board 4 Additionally the following sensors are included in the Capricorn 2000EX weather station e Wind speed sensor e Wind direction sensor e Temp
55. splays a splash screen when it s starting an App The splash which 1s often just a logo of the App is displayed until the App has been fully loaded and is ready for use Most Apps performs some loading of data during the splash screen The loaded data can then be displayed immediately when the app has been fully loaded The Apps must display the first page within 5 seconds or they will be terminated by the operating system and they will fail the store certification 47 This means that Apps cannot load large amount of data during the splash screen Since most Apps need to load some data during start up this could be problematic Most developers goes around this problem by implementing an extended splash screen by creating a page after the splash screen that imitates as the default splash screen The operating system displays the extended splash screen page after the default splash screen believing that this is the first page of the App however this is just a page for loading data Microsoft recommends that a progress ring or some loading animation is implemented if the App uses long time to load the data this way the users will not think that the App has crashed 5 8 Windows App Store Certification Kit WACK The Windows App Certification Kit WACK is a software that can be used to analyse the Apps before uploading them to Windows Store The software contains a lot of automated tests that is also performed by Microsoft when the App is uploaded for
56. st rain fall and solar radiation data to determine the most proper background image that describes the current weather best The function returns the image name and the App searches for this image in the App folder A set of weather images has been saved in the App folder for this purpose and the selected image is set as the background image for the new frame All the pages therefore will have the same background image 7 3 Main Page The implementation of the graphical user interface for the main page was based on the draft created during the design phase and the final user interface displayed in Figure 7 4 is very much like the draft in Figure 6 4 The current weather data is displayed at the center of the page while the maximum and minimum values are displayed at the bottom of the page The data is displayed using textblocks while dynamic pictures and animations has been used to improve the user experience The following animations were created using Blend for Visual studio 42 e rainfall animation This animation shows some raindrops falling down from a cloud when it rains The latest rainfall data is used to start and stop this animation e Wind direction animation This animation shows the wind direction using the latest measured wind direction The wind direction values are in the range of O 360 An arrow is used to point at this direction e Air pressure animation This animation illustrates pressure rise and pressure drop using a pr
57. t weather parameters Display trends of the most important weather parameters Display the max min values of the most important weather parameters Update the live tiles periodically with the latest data even when the app is not in use Get forecast data from the Norwegian Metrological Institute 41 Usability The app should be easy to use by everybody The app should be touch screen friendly The data should be displayed in various formats text table chart simple animations Reliability No reliability requirements were identified Performance The app should respond fast to user interaction and display simple animations during longer processes Supportability The latest version of the weather app should be available in Windows Store The Application should be developed using Visual Studio 2012 using C and XAML The App should be free 6 2 Graphical User Interface In the design phase a draft for the graphical user interface was created using the built in tablet simulator in Visual Studio and PowerPoint The draft consisted of several slides where each represented an App page The default weather App in Windows 8 was first studied in order get an a idea of how a good user interface with a consistent look should be designed Several screenshots was then taken for each page of a simple blank App running on the tablet simulator in Visual Studio The screenshots was exported to PowerPoint where small pict
58. ta Dashboard from National Instruments will be tested on Windows 8 Furthermore an extensive documentation will be made in the form of tutorials Figure 1 2 shows an overview of the topics covered during this thesis work The original task description can be found in Appendix A and the following work has been added to this description e An ASP NET website created to improve the functionalities of the application e Weather forecast data from the Norwegian Metrological Institute retrieved from yr no and displayed on the application School Network A Building C Building B Weather station sensors New Work Figure 1 2 Thesis overview The software tools used during this thesis work are e Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 e Microsoft Blend for Visual Studio 2012 e SQL management studio e Windows App Certification Kit L 1 3 Report Structure Chapter 2 Gives an overview of the different parts in the weather station from Colombia Weather Systems Chapter 3 Discusses the weather system built around the weather station from Colombia Weather Systems and how this system has been used during this thesis work Chapter 4 Gives an overview of the major mobile platforms and the increasing use of these platforms for engineering activities Chapter 5 Gives first an introduction on how Windows Store Apps are different from ordinary applications Then important concepts of Windows Store Apps are discus
59. tatements are shown in Table 3 1 Table 3 1 SOL commands CREATE Used to create objects such as tables DROP Used to delete objects INSERT INTO Used to insert new data to a table SELECT Used to extract data from the database UPDATE Used to update data in a database DELETE Used to delete data from the database 3 3 3 Stored Procedures The weather system has several stored procedures that external applications can use to retrieve data with A stored procedure is a set of precompiled SQL statements that are grouped to perform a specific task Often multiple SQL statements that are commonly used by many external applications can be stored into one procedure In addition to SQL statements the stored procedures can contain control statements such as While loops for loops and IF ELSE statements Stored procedures are powerful and effective tools that reduces the amount of traffic as they are compiled only once After complication the procedures are available for use and external application can call them anytime they need a specific task to be done The stored procedures in the weather system database performs various tasks for the external applications The most important procedures are shown in Table 3 2 Table 3 2 Store procedures 3 GetLatest Get the latest measurement value for a specific weather parameter EX exec GetLatest umtTempl GetWeatherltemData Get all the measurement values for a parameter within a specif
60. the Modbus application are stored The table stores the measurement values a unique primary key identifying each measurement value WeatherDatalD the measurement time and most import a foreign key WeatherParameterID referencing the measured parameter Row 4 in Figure 3 3 shows a specific measurement value the time it was measured and its foreign key which is 2 To find out the parameter this measurement value belongs to and the information related to it we can simply locate the weather parameter that has primary key 2 in the weather parameter table Looking back at the weather in Figure 3 2 we can see that this represents wind speed Primary key Foreign key WeatherDatalD WeatherParameterID MeasurementValue MeasurementDate Time 1 10 oq 0 2012 10 30 14 00 00 000 1 0 2012 10 30 14 50 37 000 3 1 2012 10 30 15 24 46 000 2 2012 10 30 15 24 46 000 5 3 2012 10 30 15 24 46 000 E 2 4 129 375 2012 10 30 15 24 46 000 EJ 2 5 82 2012 10 30 15 24 41 000 Figure 3 3 WEATHER_DATA table 3 3 1 E R Diagram All the tables in the weather system database and their relationships is displayed on the Entity Relationship Diagram E R in Figure 3 4 From the diagram we can easily see all the tables their attributes and most important their relationship The arrows between the tables represents the foreign keys linking the tables together 17 WEATHER SYSTEM ER diagram CONFIGURATION WEATHER_DATA ConfigurationID PK
61. ts only of XML data that defines the tile content The main advantage with live tile is that notifications are registered on the operating system so it can take care of getting new updates even when the App is not running These updates cannot trigger any code execution 1 Microsoft has created 46 different XML tile templates that is included in Visual Studio 2012 and the XML notifications defines which templates to use which picture to use from the apps own picture folder and the text that should appear on the tile The various tile templates and their XML code is defined in Microsoft s developer website 2 33 5 2 1 Local Notifications The local notifications occur when the app 1s running and are they triggered by the app logic These notifications can be used to inform the user immediately when there are changes in the App The running App can also generate up to five notifications that the tile can cycle through when the app 1s not running this way the App will seem alive even when not running Figure 5 3 a graphical overview local notifications Fe SS 32 Porsgrunn Godt 3 5 Running app Tile update Figure 5 3 Local notifications 5 2 2 Scheduled Notifications The scheduled notifications are very close to local notifications and are often called time specific local notifications These notifications are created by the app and sent to operating system services with a specific time and date des
62. ure 5 8 Running Suspending Launching Closed by user Suspended Terminating Figure 5 8 Application lifecycle The state not running is before the App has been started The App can go from not running to running when the user first starts it This state remains while the App is in foreground however if the user switches to another App or the operating system goes to power saving mode the state will be set to suspended In this state the App will no longer have access to the disk network or CPU power However the current execution mode will be saved to memory so the App can resume quickly 44 and continue from where it stopped With this approach the users can switch between multiple Apps quickly without slowing down the system The operating system notifies the App when it s being suspended and gives it 5 seconds to save current data If the App is not able to save its data within this time it can be terminated by the operating system The operating system can also terminate one or more Apps in suspended mode to free up memory if the current running App needs more resources Once the App has been started the operating system controls the app lifecycle fully and Windows Store Apps doesn t have the regular close button marked with X since they don t need to be closed 37 However the users can still close or terminate the Apps by pressing ALT F4 or the new close gesture where the Apps can be dragged down to the
63. ures figures and some text was added so each page looked like a real app page Click events was then added to simulate the navigation between the different pages The draft of the App was focused on dividing the information flow of the App into several levels where the users can get more detailed information for each level The idea of the information flow is illustrated in Figure 6 2 42 MainPage Latest data More information Figure 6 2 App information flow The draft included design of a live tile a main page and several pages to display weather parameter trends The complete draft of the user interface can be found in Appendix D 6 2 1Live Tile The tile is the first the users will see on their starts screen modern UD and the idea was to create a live tile that shows some short updates with latest measurements and small icons The draft of the live tile shown in Figure 6 3 was intended to show short and eye catching information Ahmed Gurha A This sideshow a typical Allthe apps are The app will have a live tile that shows start page in windows8 represented astiles the latest updates click on the tile Figure 6 3 Live tile 43 6 2 2 Main Page The draft of the main page was designed to show the latest measurements of the most important weather parameters and max min data as well The draft displayed in Figure 6 4 was also designed with hidden buttons over each weather parameter for navigation to mo
64. veral tests such as security test technical compliance test and content compliance test before the Apps are released Most of these tests are automated except the content compliance test where an engineer reviews the App manually See the tutorial Submitting Apps to Windows Store in Appendix J for more information about testing of the App before deployment 9 1 Windows Store App Certification Kit WACK Test The App was tested several times with Windows Store App Certification Kit until it passed all the tests The software returned error reports each time the App failed these errors were located in the App and fixed Figure 9 1 shows the final result of the certification kit where the App passed all the tests Windows App Certification Kit Test Results App name c8d23e80 7c40 4fab b067 839fe80d4094 App version 1 1 3 1 App publisher Ahmed OS Version Microsoft Windows 8 Pro 6 2 9200 0 Overall result PASSED Crashes and hangs test Supported API test Debug configuration test Windows Runtime metadata validation A l ExclusiveTo attribute test PASSED App launch tests PASSED Supported APIs PASSED Debug configuration PASSED Type location test PASSED Crashes and hangs 7 Performance test File encoding PASSED Type name case sensitivity test App manifest compliance test PASSED Bytecode generation PASSED UTF 8 file encoding PR AP PASSED App manifest PASSED Performance launch PASSED General metadata correctness test PA
65. weather updates and information from the school on the App tile A website was also created in ASP NET to manage the information from school that is displayed on the live tiles New functions has been implemented on the Weather SDK web service for the App and website A stored procedure was also implemented in the weather system database to simplify the data management process for the website and take care of username and password checking The App was developed using the C programming language for implementing the App logic and XAML for the graphical user interface Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 was used as development environment for the App the ASP NET website and for implementing new functions on the weather SDK web service 63 12 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 References Apple ipad 2013 Microsoft 2013 Windows Store Developer Center Available https appdev microsoft com StorePortals Christian Aanning Ahmed Gurhan Victor Amaechi Igbokwe Jishnu Unnikannan Nair Cuong Nguyen and Andre Skare Berg Design and Implementation of Weather System for Acquiring and Monitoring of Weather Data 2012 I Columba Weather Systems Capricorn 2000EX Weather Station User Manual vol 1 06 2011 I Columbia Weather Systems 2013 Weather MicroServer Available http www colum
66. work with this thesis work has focused on using the functions in the web service for all the database communications For more information on how to create and use web services see Appendix G 23 Part II Theory 4 Mobile Platforms Since the use of mobile devices and mobile platforms for engineering activities 1s increasing this chapter will give an overview of the major platforms available on the market today For more details about these platforms see the tutorial Mobile platforms in Appendix B 4 1 Overview Mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets are today everywhere and they offer a large range of possibilities for usage in everyday life These devices are gradually replacing desktop pc s and laptops for daily activities such as checking email playing games streaming videos and browsing the internet These devices are therefore often considered as recreational devices but they can also be powerful engineering tools 20 Desktop pc s has been the most important engineering tool for many years and the development of laptops gave the engineers more portability but the development of powerful and user friendly mobile platforms has now made tablets more useful for engineering purposes Tablets are easier to carry more convenient and they often run on simple user friendly OS with fast start up time E Y F The mobile platforms makes it possible for engineers to monitor systems remotely from Figure 4 1 Mobile
67. y etc A new method named GetWeatherlcon was implemented in the weather SDK web service that returns an image name in the same way as in section 7 2 Figure 7 6 shows how the main page looks like on a rainy day with cloudy background The dynamic image is also showing rain while we can see a raindrop falling down from the cloud for the rainfall animation 7 4 Weather Trends Pages Weather trends are presented in the App for the weather parameters Temperature Wind speed Wind direction Air pressure rainfall Wind chill and Humidity Three pages was created for each weather parameter to display the weather trends where one page is an overview page showing the weather trends in small graphs The users can then click on cover buttons placed on top of these graphs to get more detailed pages for the weather trends last 24 hours and last 30 days Figure 7 7 shows how the overview page for the temperature trends looks like The graph on the left side shows the temperature trends for the last 24 hours while the graph on right side shows the temperature trends for last 30 days lemperature trends Figure 7 7 Overview page for temperature trends Figure 7 8 Shows how the more detailed page for the last 24 hours looks like The users can also select whether the data should be displayed in bar chart area chart or line chart see Appendix H for more photos of these pages 92 Temperature trends last 24 hours Figure 7 8 Temperatu

Candidate: Ahmed Gurhan Title: Design and Development of

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