RE: GAS Usage Monitoring ?

[Marcus Warrington <marcus.warrington@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Kevin

Thanks for the helpful information (as per usual). The EKM 'pulse' sounds
a=
lmost perfect , especially if you can xAP'ify it :)

At the moment I use a USB OWL receiver to gather electric usage but being
w=
ireless it does suffer from the occasional dropout so having a hardwired
so=
lution (that can then be xAP broadcast) for both Electric and Gas sounds
li=
ke a perfect solution.

Please keep us posted any progress.

Marcus

From: ukha_d@xxxxxxx [mailto:ukha_d@xxxxxxx] On Behalf Of K=
evin Hawkins
Sent: 12 September 2012 13:51
To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ukha_d] GAS Usage Monitoring ?



I monitor all my utilities using pulse count meters. The thing about
the gas and water ones is that they are a relatively slow pulse output
with a longish period both open and closed and so are really easy to
interface to almost any counter type device. Conversely electricity
meters tend to have very short marker pulses which can easily be missed
if the counters aren't fast enough. The 1-wire counters Simon
mentioned below , which I also use via xAP), are fast enough for all the
meters though. I also use other IDRANet and as well as a MOXA
controller that spits out cumulative pulse counts over Ethernet in a xAP
like format.

Also, although a bit more costly at just over =A3100 + current transformer
, there is an electricity meter product that has RS232 readable counters
which avoids you having to implement your own counters and reader/PC
interface, and they also have a different product that has a couple of
dry contact inputs to count other meters typically gas and water.
Having a standalone PC readable counter rather than having to constantly
keep track of pulses and store count somewhere is so much easier and
more accurate (a big failing of the IDRANet approach). EKM offer a low
cost PC interface and fairly nice software too.

*http://www.ekmmetering.com/

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/170906601121**
*
**http://tinyurl.com/9bjgx8q
(pulse version but currently out of stock - maybe a new version due ?)*

*IIRC when I looked at this a few months back there was a future version
of the product intended that had some extra functionality, maybe the
combined functionality of these two products, and so I delayed buying
one... I'll look back over the email response I got back from the
manufacturer which was one of the most helpful and complete I've ever
had and post some more info. If they do have the later version
available now then I'll be buying one and so hopefully a xAP conduit
will emerge.

Kevin

On 12/09/2012 12:33, Simon Haslam wrote:
> Nice! Having a reed switch ready to go seems ideal and will save a lot
of=
faff with photodiodes and the like.
>
> I bought this counter http://www.hobby-boards.com/store/products/Dual-Cou=
nter.html last year (just to sit on a shelf of course). It's got two
inputs=
and I assume you'd just connect the reed switch between the input and 5V o=
r ground (I've not looked up which). Don't know whether it would need
de-bo=
uncing - hopefully not - so minimal electronics skills needed.
>
>
> The counter is 1-wire so you could then use a 1-wire to USB adaptor
and s=
omething like OWFS to collect readings - shouldn't take long to set up.
You=
'd need to run a 1-wire/cat 5 from your meter housing to a
PC/NAS/RasPi/etc=
running OWFS though.
>
> HTH
>
>
> Simon
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>

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