Using RTL-SDR to read value from wireless electric/gas/water meters

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An attempt to use RTL-SDR to read values from wireless electric/gas/water meters and visualize these values on Home Assistant.

Based on RTLAMR Project: GitHub - bemasher/rtlamr: An rtl-sdr receiver for Itron ERT compatible smart meters operating in the 900MHz ISM band.

Python & HA Yaml: RTLAMR: RTL-SDR to read electric/gas/water meters · GitHub

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Very interesting project. I have always wanted to monitor my water and gas consumption.

I have ordered a RTL-SDR, hopefully it will be here in a week. Then it will be a good rainy weekend project

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this is very cool, thanks for the tips. I was able to get this working to get the readings from my water meter.

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Were you able to run the adapter on Raspberry Pi running Hassio?

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I used another linux box I had. I don’t know if you could run this on hass.io without an addon.

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I was actually thinking of making an add-on. :slight_smile: I assume the linux box is not a Pi (or some other ARM based platform)?

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With latest golang(>v1.9), rtlamr does not exceed more than 70% on 1 core CPU in RPi3. If an earlier version of golang (<v1.9) is used, it will gobble up all your cores on a RPi3. It highly depends on the symbol length. There is a docker file in that repo as well. One can run it on hass.io using a separate docker container, I haven’t tried it!

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@debsahu thanks! I’ll try it out and report back if I succeed.

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I decided to get another Pi Zero W and install RTAMR on it. It works well. :slight_smile:

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Hello @mladem
did you install the software as described in the OP? if yes how did you install it?

Thanks.

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I took an Pi Zero W

Hope this helps!

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Hey @mladem thanks for the detailed explanation.

Do you think this rtl sdr would work ? I have this one.

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.co.uk%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F323398868999

Thanks.

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It works with this one: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B011HVUEME?ref=yo_pop_ma_swf
Yours appears to be same/similar chipset, so I assume it should.

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Perfect I will try and install on my rpi zero w and see if my rtl sdr works.

Thanks for your help.

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@mladem my electricity smart meter is Landis Gyr+ and apparently it uses zigbee. Do you think the rtf-sdr would still sniff the signals ? sorry for the silly questions mate.

Finally how did you install GO? I am struggling.

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@mladem

right so I got this far and when I run the command rtlamr this is my output. Mind you this output is not changing at all and this is surprising as I live in a flat with my neighbours meter next to me, so I would expect to get more than 1 output.

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ rtlamr
15:19:47.035141 decode.go:45: CenterFreq: 912600155
15:19:47.040839 decode.go:46: SampleRate: 2359296
15:19:47.042413 decode.go:47: DataRate: 32768
15:19:47.043984 decode.go:48: ChipLength: 72
15:19:47.046395 decode.go:49: PreambleSymbols: 21
15:19:47.047490 decode.go:50: PreambleLength: 3024
15:19:47.048779 decode.go:51: PacketSymbols: 96
15:19:47.049751 decode.go:52: PacketLength: 13824
15:19:47.053034 decode.go:59: Protocols: scm
15:19:47.053892 decode.go:60: Preambles: 111110010101001100000
15:19:47.054497 main.go:111: GainCount: 5

Does the above look correct to you? I cannot find my meter id in the output above.

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Based on your output, I don’t see you are receiving anything… This just shows setup of the SDR. This might be the case because of your particular meter, so you probably have to look at https://github.com/bemasher/rtlamr and try to play with different options in order to start getting readings. Once you do start getting readings, use -filterid=xxxxxxxxx option when you run rtlamr

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I had a look on the github page what options are you talking about ?

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I have a Landis + Gyr power meter with Zigbee and it is not compatible with the RTLAMR library. The problem is that a lot of smart power meters are mesh networked and have FSK encryption.

There is a .csv file Here that indicates tested models. Make sure to check the FCC ID number along with the model number

Edit: forgot to mention, some utility companies have hardware that they allow to pair with the power meter for remote readings. My service provider (EPCOR) allows a device by Rainforest Automation to pair with the meter to allow readings.

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Thanks for this. So i am getting data from my neptune r900 water meter and had a question on the consumption value. Is that a cumulative value or current flow rate? watching over time the value seems to be the same 2 as below.

sample data:
{Time:2018-11-21T23:47:35.678 R900:{ID:1481890102 Unkn1:0xA1 NoUse: 0 BackFlow:0 Consumption: 278600 Unkn3:0x00 Leak:15 LeakNow:3}}
{Time:2018-11-21T23:47:35.702 R900:{ID:1481890102 Unkn1:0xA1 NoUse: 0 BackFlow:0 Consumption: 2590208 Unkn3:0x00 Leak:15 LeakNow:3}}