A remote water meter reader is a device able to read and transmit wirelessly water meter readings. Meters generate pulses and the remote water meter actually does pulse counting.
How does remote water meter reading work?
In most of the water meters, there is are a number of dialers. Each dialer represents one digit in the final meter reading.
On one of the dialers, there is a magnet pointer. Which effectively means that this pointer has a magnet. As the magnet rotates it can generate pulses on each turn. In the example above we see that the magnet pointer is on the 0x001 dialer. This effectively means that one rotation of that dialer means that 0x01 m3 of water has been consumed. Which actually is equal to the value of the previous dialer.
The next piece in the remote water meter reading puzzle is the pulse output which is also known as pulser. Effectively pulsers are cables with a reed switch or other pulse generation electronic element. There are reed switch pulsers or electronic pulser. Reed switch pulsers generate dry contact pulses. Electronic pulsers generate open collector/S0 pulsers.
The final piece of the puzzle is the pulse counter. The pulse counter is able to count the pulses that your meter generates. With it your water meter will become a water meter with remote readout.
There are various kinds of pulse counters – some only count and know the last digit. Others like ThingsLog data loggers not only count but also record per certain period the current meter reading.
How does remote water meter reading looks together?
Here is an example of a water meter with an electronic pulser connected to one of our data loggers – LPMDL–110X a remote water meter reading device with 2G/4G, NB-IoT, and LoRaWAN able to read pulses from multiple meters.
ThingsLog Data loggers are remote water meter reader devices able to log our water consumption and transmit it over the air. In ThingsLog the data is transmitted to our remote water meter read system -ThingsLog RMMAAS where it is stored, analyzed and visualized.
ThingsLog remote water meter reading platform is suitable for end-users but also for utility personnel, facility managers, and other people that care about smart water.
In the example above we can see how the actual meter readings generated by the remote water meter readings are converted to useful data and a leak has been actually detected.
The complete business case is fulfilled by the ThingsLog mobile app where end-users can review their consumption and get instant notifications about their consumption.
Conclusion
Finally, in this post, we have reviewed the complete remote water meter reader use case – a device able to read pulses from water meters, transmit them wirelessly to a platform, convert the data to meaning full information and finally show it in a nice way to utility operator and the end-user. In ThingsLog the remote water meter reading is part of our smart monitoring solutions – “Smart water” use case. If you are interested in please learn more here.
