I am looking to take on the project that Brant Salzman details in the blog below:
I want to pick up meter readings from my Itron AMR enabled meter that is installed at my home. But my curiosity is whether a radio antenna at the complete opposite side of my home where my HA Raspberry Pi is located will pick up the signal?
My assumption was that these kinds of meters are meant to send signals pretty far so the utility can pick them up from quite a distance, but if my assumption is wrong, I’d love to be corrected before investing the time into this project.
You will probably be fine with picking up the signal if you have a compatible meter. I use RTLAMR with a cheap SDR and I can pickup signals from dozens of nearby meters. The hardest part is the compatible meters. My water meter at me new house is a proprietary encrypted smart meter that I can’t read but at my old house the gas, water and electricity meters were all fairly open and easy to pickup.