First demo development efforts
After proposing the general idea of the Open Climate system, we started working with a team of students and developers at the Yale Openlab on creating a demo to explore the different features the platform should consider.
We kickstarted this process in May 2019 and by September our work lead to being able to lay out an ambitious platform architecture, and a whitepaper that describes the logic and need of the system. Throughout this process we created a lot of the documentation that guides the project today, as well as the initial ideas and mockups for the Open Climate platform.
The aim of these efforts was to layout a general vision and map out a landscape. It was thanks to these efforts that we were able to propose the different domains and aspects that we are using for this year's Collabathon.
The outputs were the following:
These are used to compile the first demo prototype, with different repos for back and front end. It also includes the first datasets that we compiled to consider in the first version of the database.
In these repos, the database used is a simple key-value pair database called Bolt.DB, particularly useful to store public/private keys in DLT systems. We are now considering a more relationtional database like Postgres SQL.
The platform is mostly written in Go language. We have since tried to move to more language diversity, particularly for the collabathon so contributions can have a lower barrier of entry.
The front end is built in React.
Log in as 'testuser' pwd: 'a' to see features within the account tab. We used a test user for the Avangrid company, which is the USA subsidiary of Iberdrola, a supporter of this project.
Many, or most, features in the demo site are not fully functional nor working smoothly. One of the main issues we faced was on the database layer to properly integrate it on the front end. This has been the main challenge to address in the new MVP efforts.
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A big effort entailed proposing many aspects of the platform at a visual interface level. We did this by designing an ideal platform using Adobe Xd. These mockup designs were also used in the front end demo version. They can be re-utilized for further iterations in the exploration.
See the Adobe Xd design link here​
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This diagram shows the result of a process flow mapping exercise over the summer for considerations in the building of the platform, features, and blockchain role
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