Installation & Startup

The Q-Scope frontend, as used in the project QUARRE100, was programmed using pygame - a set of Python modules designed for writing video games. In this chapter, we will first handle the frontend’s installation and afterwards explain its features by going through the code (more or less linearly).

Installation

After cloning the frontend’s repository, you can simply install all required python modules by executing pip install -r requirements.txt. (If the requirements.txt file is incomplete, and you run into problems, just install whichever module is missing via pip3 install [MODULE].) Simply run the script via python3 run_q100viz.py

File Structure

qScope_frontend
└───q100viz
    └───graphics
    |   contains tools for graph creation and image handling
    └───interaction
    |   "gameplay" modes and interaction with sliders
    └───settings
└───run_q100viz.py

Run

The main script is called run_q100viz.py. You can start it from the qScope_frontend folder by running python3 run_q100viz.py. Some flags can be set to enable debug options:

  • --select_random [NUMBER_OF_HOUSES]: preselects n houses to opt in for a connection to the heat grid

  • --verbose: activates verbose mode to print more information to console

  • --simulate_until [NUMBER_OF_YEAR]: run the gama-simulation until the given year. last simulation step will be last day before entered year.

  • --connect: force buildings to opt in for “connection_to_heat_grid”

  • --refurbish: force buildings to opt in for “refurbish”

  • --save_energy: force buildings to opt in for “save_energy”

  • --start_at: force the frontend to start at a certain mode

  • --test:

  • --main_window: forces the projection canvas to pop up at the current monitor.

  • --research_model: There are two simulation files provided. If specified, the research model will be used for simulation (rather than the workshop model)

These flags are specified in the first section of the main script. At the end of the main script, an instance of the frontend is created and run in the loop.

Some key events are implemented in the QUARREE100 example project that can be used during runtime to interact with the frontend (e.g. for debugging purposes).