Dynamic Glazing with custom schedule PMV comfort recipe error

Asisnath · February 18, 2025, 7:17pm

Hello all. Hi @chris , I am trying to simulate a dynamic glazing with custom schedule having 4 states with PMV comfort recipe of a small shoebox model but its failing. The script is working with normal glazing window but with dynamic window its failing. The error is as below

Kindly assist in debugging this
!

chris · February 18, 2025, 7:45pm

Hwy @Asisnath ,

If you are getting “UnicodeDecodeErrors”, then the cause is most likely the name that you have specified for one of your objects. I’ll try to check your file when I get the chance but, as a start, you should make sure that all of your schedules, materials and dynamic construction don’t have any non-ASCII characters in them.

Asisnath · February 18, 2025, 7:47pm

Thanks @chris for the quick assist. I have checked the script and it’s working with non dynamic window. But still I will have a close look again and please let me know if you could figure out any issue in this script

chris · February 18, 2025, 8:01pm

Hey @Asisnath ,

I recreated the failing simulation on my end and here are the logs:
logs.zip (47.6 KB)
(I’m using a zip file as we have to add support for uploading .log files to the forum here).

This is the line that is failing:

github.com

ladybug-tools/ladybug-comfort/blob/master/ladybug_comfort/map/_helper.py#L24


      
              filepath: Full path to Radiance file.
          
          Returns:
              nrows, ncols, ncomp, line_count, fmt
          """
          try:
              inf = open(filepath, 'rb', encoding='utf-8')
          except Exception:
              inf = open(filepath, 'rb')
          try:
              first_line = next(inf).rstrip().decode('utf-8')
              if first_line[:10] != '#?RADIANCE':
                  error_message = (
                      f'File with Radiance header must start with #?RADIANCE not '
                      f'{first_line}.'
                  )
                  raise ValueError(error_message)
          
              header_lines = [first_line]
              nrows = ncols = ncomp = None
              for line in inf:

… and this is the full failure traceback:

2025-02-18 11:49:33 INFO: Failed to run Shortwave MRT Delta map.
2025-02-18 11:49:33 INFO: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0x93 in position 0: invalid start byte
2025-02-18 11:49:33 INFO: Traceback (most recent call last):
2025-02-18 11:49:33 INFO: File "C:\Program Files\ladybug_tools\python\lib\site-packages\ladybug_comfort\cli\map.py", line 593, in shortwave_mrt
2025-02-18 11:49:33 INFO: d_mrt_temps = shortwave_mrt_map(
2025-02-18 11:49:33 INFO: File "C:\Program Files\ladybug_tools\python\lib\site-packages\ladybug_comfort\map\mrt.py", line 89, in shortwave_mrt_map
2025-02-18 11:49:33 INFO: indirect_con = _ill_file_to_data(indirect_con_f, sun_indices, t_step, lp_yr)
2025-02-18 11:49:33 INFO: File "C:\Program Files\ladybug_tools\python\lib\site-packages\ladybug_comfort\map\mrt.py", line 289, in _ill_file_to_data
2025-02-18 11:49:33 INFO: results = binary_to_array(ill_file)
2025-02-18 11:49:33 INFO: File "C:\Program Files\ladybug_tools\python\lib\site-packages\ladybug_comfort\map\_helper.py", line 78, in binary_to_array
2025-02-18 11:49:33 INFO: nrows, ncols, ncomp, line_count, fmt = binary_mtx_dimension(binary_file)
2025-02-18 11:49:33 INFO: File "C:\Program Files\ladybug_tools\python\lib\site-packages\ladybug_comfort\map\_helper.py", line 24, in binary_mtx_dimension
2025-02-18 11:49:33 INFO: first_line = next(inf).rstrip().decode('utf-8')
2025-02-18 11:49:33 INFO: UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0x93 in position 0: invalid start byte

I can see that the line that is failing is a part of the code that @mikkel added a few months ago to support using binary Radiance files in the comfort recipes. So I think that he is probably best equipped to fix it and I am assigning this issue to him.

If you badly need a simulation like this to succeed right now for your deadline, you can go back to LBT 1.8.0 stable release using the LB Versioner. I’m fairly confident that this simulation should succeed for that version since it was before we started implementing the improvement to support binary radiance files in the comfort recipes.

Asisnath · February 18, 2025, 8:06pm

Thank you @chris. Let me try rolling back to LBT 1.8.0. Will let you know if it works. Thanks again for timely input.

chris · February 18, 2025, 10:06pm

Hey @Asisnath ,

@mikkel was very fast with getting a fix together:

I verified that it gets your file to succeed. So just run the LB Versioner to get the latest version and you should be good to go.

Asisnath · February 19, 2025, 3:39am

I confirm the update has solved the error. Thank you @chris @mikkel for your timely help.