| ▲ | ComputerGuru 5 days ago |
| I was informed maybe 7 or 8 years back that my electric company would be replacing my analog meter with a smart one and always intended to try and glean more information about my electric consumption habits from it. It took me a lot longer than I intended, but last year I finally bought an RTL-SDR in the hopes of being able to get realtime info from the meter. Unfortunately, it seems that it's not one of the ones that emits consumption info over ISM bands for consumption by household appliances (so far as I can tell) and I ended up only capturing info from TPMS sensors off of passing cars (which was cool, but not really what I was looking for). Do note that if you purchase an RTL-SDR these days, you'll probably get a v4 which, at least as of last year, does not play out-of-the-box at all with the software available on the Ubuntu apt repos and the RTL-SDR drivers that ship with 24.04 out-of-the-box — there were some hardware protocol/interface changes between v3 and v4 that make the old drivers incompatible and you'll get a litany of misleading or non-specific errors if you try without downloading and installing the latest drivers from GitHub (or somewhere). |
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| ▲ | fullstop 5 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| Look into Rainforest Automation. I have their EMU-2 which can be paired with my electric meter. It spits out XML data which can be read by Home Assistant. https://www.rainforestautomation.com/rfa-z105-2-emu-2-2/ |
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| ▲ | ComputerGuru a day ago | parent [-] | | I’m intrigued but that is one of the worst (least technical) product pages for a very technical product that I’ve come across. My biggest concern was that it has no mention of compatibility, it just says it connects to the smart meter via zigbee but aside from the obvious fact that zigbee is just the network protocol and does not necessarily mean all smart meters use the same layer 7 details, I don’t even know if my smart meter has zigbee to begin with! Ah, I just found a FAQ page for the site not linked from the product page that answers the compatibility question. Also, I wouldn’t have known the product exposes an API I could use to programmatically get the (XML-only?) usage data in realtime over the network if you hadn’t told me, the product listing makes it look like it’s just a screen (and the faq doesn’t have anything about connecting to the device programmatically). Anyhow, thanks for brining this to my attention! This might be exactly what I was looking for! | | |
| ▲ | fullstop a day ago | parent [-] | | I received my device as part of a pilot program with my utility company. Check with your electric company first, and also look at your local library -- my brother was able to borrow one from there to check compatibility first. |
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| ▲ | vel0city 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| A number of smart meters communicate over the mains wires, especially when they're in very sparse areas. There was even a thought for a bit to offer internet services over the power distribution cables, but I don't think they ever really got effective data rates high enough to be competitive. |
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| ▲ | ComputerGuru 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Yes, that seems to be what mine is doing as my ecobee thermostat is able to read info about peak usage times from the mains. I didn't know about the latter part though, I never imagined electric companies were making a play for the internet (though it seems like an obvious thought in retrospect). | | |
| ▲ | esseph 5 days ago | parent [-] | | A lot of electric companies in the US are also ISPs. They already have most of the equipment to run fiber, and many also do wireless links between substations. |
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| ▲ | mdaniel 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | And its "last mile" friend of using the in-wall cable as Ethernet drops, too, e.g. https://www.tp-link.com/us/powerline/ (but I don't think it holds a candle to actually pulling cat 5 or 6, for clarity) | |
| ▲ | dpb001 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | In the early 2000’s there were efforts to provide broadband over power lines (BPL). I think one of the biggest obstacles was the radio frequency interference it generated. | | | |
| ▲ | extraduder_ire 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | If it's low enough bitrate, wouldn't you be able to read that by putting an antenna or loop of wire near the mains? I assume they use a documented standard. |
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| ▲ | esseph 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I have a v5 and have had no issues with Fedora 42 btw. Worked out of the box. When I was installing it I actually came across the Ubuntu installation notes only to find I didn't need to do any of those things on my systems. |
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| ▲ | depingus 5 days ago | parent [-] | | I believe the v5 is a Nooelec and is comparable to the RTL v3. The RTL v4 is the latest chip. They both have different strengths and weaknesses tho. https://www.onesdr.com/rtl-sdr-vs-nesdr-which-one-should-i-b... | | |
| ▲ | esseph 4 days ago | parent [-] | | A lot of the Nesdr kits come with a Ham It Up 1.3 already, which seems to be the only real difference listed besides the accuracy of the crystal oscillator being much more accurate in the Smart v5. I'm looking at a bladeRF... |
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| ▲ | dtgriscom 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| > capturing info from TPMS sensors off of passing cars ... sitting on a porch, yelling "Check your tires!" at random cars... |
