What would be the best way to read a water meter (city owned) that is quite far away (30m~) away from the main building. I looked into ESP32Cam solutions but i am not sure whether the signal would pull thru small amounts of land & thru the wall’s buildings.
It is a digital water meter - there is definetly a frequency but i think the provider wouldn’t allow private readings.
Which water meter do you have?
Sadly i have not been able to look at it, i’m an intern at a company working on a smart building project - but i’m pretty sure the city’s installed
“Iskrasonic IW.1” water meter - have not found any rules against reading the water meter myself via frequency. But since the distance is quite large not sure if a normal frequency receiver would suffice.
They appear to support LoRaWAN and wm-bus, which are both 868MHz.
I would not worry about 30 meter. At this frequency the range can be very high, especially LoRaWAN.
However, I don’t see much technical information about this water meter and I assume the data is encrypted. That will be the biggest challenge.
Since it’s city installed i am 99% sure it’s encrypted - i wouldn’t wanna cause issues decrypting etc. as they might be against it or we could ask for access to it - but i think ESP32Cam would be the only option?
The two dots in the front. Isn’t that something like a DLMS protocol interface?
It’s a standard protocol used in many power/gas/water meters and the data is open.
It is very possible - i have to ask for confirmation if this might be the exact model so i can plan out exactly - i’ve seen people using reed switches too for the spindisc that’s inside.
It’s good bet. You can get these DLMS readers on lot’s of places. Then you only need an 868MHz serial transmitter and receiver to transport the data. It will give you more insight than a read switch.
So from DLMS reader into a transmitter - i’ve tried researching which one i could implement but couldn’t find a way to connect the DLMS and power it for it to read & send a signal thru a antenna. Would it be possible to run this setup thru an ESP, so DLMS reader (usb) into ESP (usb input) and an antenna output.
Since i have a water meter reader and a calorimeter with the DLMS this could be a viable solution
