RF reader for water meter

[Super_voip]

I have been watching a TV show about conserving energy,water etc and one show on water consumption included a graph of water usage throughout the day. Maybe they had inserted their own water meter for the series but I have noticed that our local water meters are read by RF. The meter reader places the sensor on top of the water meter. Since it would seem that the meters would be designed not to clear the readings, it should be possible to read without disrupting any thing. Has anyone seen a project or built such a reader. I will find the model number this weekend, the meters are below ground level and last time I had to dig all the dirt out of the pit.

 

[Super_voip]

OK, so I've dug out the meter again and the only identifing marks are ,on the lid RMC ZENNER, and on the meter itself AZ 080421. There is a rectangular hole/divet in the face which according to the Zenner site is for a Reed switch 1 pulse/100 litres. The radio frequencies mentioned on the site are 433 & 989 MHz. If I can't use RF the fact that they have provided a pulse output solution is very handy. I'll try and catch a meter reader in action next time an carefully observe.

 

[Hero999]

Is this meter the water company's property? If so I would leave it alone if I were you.

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

A guy who used to work with me went to a company that manufactures metering systems for the water industry - I don't know if it's for normal domestic supplies or not?. What I do know is that they are mainly PIC based, and most use RF transmitters for reading them - some even have cell phone type transmitters, presumably these are for remote locations?, and not just domestic.

 

[Super_voip]

Meter reading

From casual observation, the meter readers have to lift the plastic lid off the meter pit before using the reader. So from that I can assume close proximity is required, I suppose it stops the wrong meter from being read. The reed switch method will be tried this weekend, I have a bicycle speedo/distance meter that actually came in a cornflakes packet, it has a stting to read pulses from a magnet attached to a wheel. So a quick bit of screw mangling and I'll have a proto-reader.