winnie
Senior Member
- Location
- Springfield, MA, USA
- Occupation
- Electric motor research
There appear to be different types of smart meter, and different utilities have implemented different protocols. I have not done extensive research into this, only enough to receive data from the meter mounted on my home.
The hardware that I am using is known as an RTL-SDR. These are very cheap and generic 'Software Defined Radio' receivers that were originally built as digital video TV tuner devices, but some bright folk figured out that they were much more flexible tools than just TV tuners.
The essence of 'software defined radio' is that instead of having doing your (de)modulation in a circuit specific to a particular task, you generate digital samples of your signal and then do the (de)modulation in software. This means that by changing a numeric routine you can have AM, FM, SSB, digital modes, etc.
So if you can write a program for the smart meter modulation, you can use one of these cheap receiver dongles to receive the messages.
The particular RTL-SDR that I am using is sold by RTL-SDR.COM They are an information site about these dongles and started selling their own model. See http://www.rtl-sdr.com/buy-rtl-sdr-dvb-t-dongles/
I am using a laptop running Ubuntu, and installed 'gnuradio' to drive the dongle.
The software that I am using for decoding the smart meter messages is called 'rtlamr' and is a little tricky to setup. https://github.com/bemasher/rtlamr
In a ubuntu shell window I used the following commands:
then I inserted the RTL dongle, and had to adjust things so that it wouldn't be used for TV
http://www.instructables.com/id/rtl-sdr-on-Ubuntu/step3/Setup-udev-rules/
finally to run stuff:
in one window give the command
and in another window give the command
and you might start seeing meter readings.
-Jon
The hardware that I am using is known as an RTL-SDR. These are very cheap and generic 'Software Defined Radio' receivers that were originally built as digital video TV tuner devices, but some bright folk figured out that they were much more flexible tools than just TV tuners.
The essence of 'software defined radio' is that instead of having doing your (de)modulation in a circuit specific to a particular task, you generate digital samples of your signal and then do the (de)modulation in software. This means that by changing a numeric routine you can have AM, FM, SSB, digital modes, etc.
So if you can write a program for the smart meter modulation, you can use one of these cheap receiver dongles to receive the messages.
The particular RTL-SDR that I am using is sold by RTL-SDR.COM They are an information site about these dongles and started selling their own model. See http://www.rtl-sdr.com/buy-rtl-sdr-dvb-t-dongles/
I am using a laptop running Ubuntu, and installed 'gnuradio' to drive the dongle.
The software that I am using for decoding the smart meter messages is called 'rtlamr' and is a little tricky to setup. https://github.com/bemasher/rtlamr
In a ubuntu shell window I used the following commands:
Code:
sudo apt-get install gccgo-go
export GOPATH=<some directory location>
go get github.com/bemasher/rtlamr
sudo apt-get install rtl-sdrthen I inserted the RTL dongle, and had to adjust things so that it wouldn't be used for TV
http://www.instructables.com/id/rtl-sdr-on-Ubuntu/step3/Setup-udev-rules/
finally to run stuff:
in one window give the command
Code:
rtl_tcp
Code:
<path to bin that you setup above>/rtlamr-Jon