Earlier this year at Google IO, Google announced that Google PowerMeter would be retired but they didn’t give many specifics. They’ve now followed up with details including a clear date when the service will be shutoff, Sept. 16, 2011. You can find the full list of reasons why the project was discontinued on the Google Blog

While this is unfortunate, SmarterMeter is able to migrate to another service as it keeps a copy of all your power data before it was uploaded to Google.

This means in the near future that SmarterMeter will need to switch to a new service for it’s graphing interface. I’ve heard of pachube but I’m wondering if there are other solutions worth looking at. Suggestions and/or volunteers are appreciated.

This is just a small update with two important bugfixes. The first bug prevented data from being sent to Google PowerMeter correctly and the second prevent exceptions from being appropriately handled.

I strongly suggest you update. Also I wanted to say a quick thanks to kruton who found and fixed the PowerMeter issue.

Today I released SmarterMeter v0.3.2, which contained several small but important bug fixes. So upgrade when you get a chance.

If you’re technically enclined you can also now use SmarterMeter to calculate your carbon footprint resulting from your electricity usage through the Brighter Planet API. See the documentation for a complete example.

Today I’m announcing the release of SmarterMeter v0.3.1. It’s the first release to include support for Windows. This now means that far more PG&E customers can monitor their power usage with Google PowerMeter.

To get started download the Windows installer, install it, run it and follow the configuration wizard.

For more information, see the project page

Since I got SmarterMeter working in Windows in my last post, the next step was to make it easier to install. After searching for the best way to make an installer, I ended up using NSIS which is a Free Software Windows installation builder. It allows application authors to create installers that look and act like traditional Windows installers but with Free Software that runs on any platform rather than expensive Windows only software.

Not knowing anything about how NSIS worked I started with their tutorials. While they did work, the look and feel didn’t match a traditional installer. Since it was important to me that the installer felt native to the user, I continued to search for a better tutorial. It turns out that there is a whole plugin system for NSIS and one of the plugins is called Modern User Interface.

Using the examples as guides I was able to create a working installer for SmarterMeter that was both functional and matched my expectations. If you want to create one for your project, feel free to use smartermeter’s as a starting point.

!include "MUI2.nsh"

Name "Smartermeter (${VERSION})"
OutFile "../pkg/smartermeter-${VERSION}.exe"

InstallDir "$PROGRAMFILES\SmarterMeter"

InstallDirRegKey HKCU "Software\SmarterMeter" ""

;Request application privileges for Windows Vista
RequestExecutionLevel user

!define MUI_ABORTWARNING
!define MUI_ICON "../icons/smartermeter.ico"

!insertmacro MUI_PAGE_WELCOME
!insertmacro MUI_PAGE_LICENSE "..\LICENSE"
!insertmacro MUI_PAGE_COMPONENTS
!insertmacro MUI_PAGE_DIRECTORY
!insertmacro MUI_PAGE_INSTFILES
!insertmacro MUI_PAGE_FINISH

!insertmacro MUI_UNPAGE_WELCOME
!insertmacro MUI_UNPAGE_CONFIRM
!insertmacro MUI_UNPAGE_INSTFILES
!insertmacro MUI_UNPAGE_FINISH

!insertmacro MUI_LANGUAGE "English"

Section "Smartermeter Base" SecBase
  SetOutPath "$INSTDIR"

  File /r "../pkg/base/*"

  CreateDirectory "$SMPROGRAMS\SmarterMeter"
  CreateShortCut "$SMPROGRAMS\SmarterMeter\SmarterMeter.lnk" "$INSTDIR\smartermeter.exe"
  CreateShortCut "$SMPROGRAMS\SmarterMeter\Uninstall.lnk" "$INSTDIR\uninstall.exe"

  ;Store installation folder
  WriteRegStr HKCU "Software\Smartermeter" "" $INSTDIR

  ;Create uninstaller
  WriteUninstaller "$INSTDIR\uninstall.exe"
SectionEnd

;Language strings
LangString DESC_SecBase ${LANG_ENGLISH} "The smartermeter application."

;Assign language strings to sections
!insertmacro MUI_FUNCTION_DESCRIPTION_BEGIN
!insertmacro MUI_DESCRIPTION_TEXT ${SecBase} $(DESC_SecBase)
!insertmacro MUI_FUNCTION_DESCRIPTION_END

Section "Uninstall"
  Delete "$INSTDIR\*.rb"
  Delete "$INSTDIR\*.jar"
  Delete "$INSTDIR\*.exe"
  RMDIR  /r "$INSTDIR\gems"
  RMDIR  /r "$INSTDIR\icons"
  RMDIR  /r "$INSTDIR\smartermeter"

  Delete "$SMPROGRAMS\Smartermeter\Smartermeter.lnk"
  Delete "$SMPROGRAMS\Smartermeter\Uninstall.lnk"
  RMDIR "$SMPROGRAMS\Smartermeter"

  RMDir "$INSTDIR"

  DeleteRegKey /ifempty HKCU "Software\Smartermeter"
SectionEnd

Once I had the installer working, I then began work on creating an executable wrapper. While it’s possible to run JRuby in jar under Windows by simply double clicking, it doesn’t act the same way that a traditional application does. So I went looking for a project that would create a simple executable that would in turn launch the jar but act just like an application. It turns out that Launch4J does exactly that. Below is the configuration file that SmarterMeter uses.

<launch4jConfig>
  <dontWrapJar>true</dontWrapJar>
  <headerType>console</headerType>
  <jar>jruby-complete.jar</jar>
  <outfile>../pkg/base/smartermeter.exe</outfile>
  <errTitle></errTitle>
  <cmdLine>main.rb</cmdLine>
  <chdir>.</chdir>
  <priority>normal</priority>
  <downloadUrl>http://java.com/download</downloadUrl>
  <supportUrl></supportUrl>
  <customProcName>true</customProcName>
  <stayAlive>false</stayAlive>
  <manifest></manifest>
  <icon>../icons/smartermeter.ico</icon>
  <var>GEM_HOME=gems</var>
  <singleInstance>
    <mutexName>smartermeter</mutexName>
    <windowTitle>Smartermeter</windowTitle>
  </singleInstance>
  <jre>
    <path></path>
    <minVersion>1.6.0</minVersion>
    <maxVersion></maxVersion>
    <jdkPreference>preferJre</jdkPreference>
  </jre>
</launch4jConfig>

Overall I am very happy with the native integration I was able to achieve with these two tools in a short amount of time.