iostack Topology in Distributed 485bee Network

[Ezzie]

I have read the preliminary information you have on your website about you iostack product in beta. It is interesting since it could cover a lot of additional sensor capability. I am interested in reserching it as a possible addition to my water well monitoring network to add the capability to monitoring water tank levels at remote sites and trigger alarms if a level goes out of range. I have a question about the topology of using this though. In my current configuration, I have deployed Omnimeter v.4's at each well site to monitor electricity use, extraction volumes (water meters) and flow rate (counting pump run time in seconds). All of this data is fed to a Push 3 at a central site via a 485bee network. This iostack product seems to be designed to attach to the Push3 so does this mean I would have to have a Push3 at each remote site??? Problem is, I don't have internet access at the remote well and tank sites.

[Jameson]

Great question. You will be able to connect the ioStack to your RS485 network, just like you connect an Omnimeter now. The ioStack has an RS485 terminal block for the connection for the RS485 A and the RS485 B connections. The ioStack can be up to 4000 feet from the EKM Push on a hardwire connection. Omnimeters and ioStacks can share the same network. One caveat to this, older v4 meters do not communicate as well if there are ioStacks on the same RS485 network. They still communicate, but the percentage of good reads will drop. Ideally you would have either an Omnimeter Pulse v.4 with a serial number greater than 350013381, or an Omnimeter Pulse v.4 UL with a serial number greater than 300014101 on the same RS485 network as the ioStack so that the percentage of good reads will not be affected by the presence of the ioStack on the bus.

You are also right that the ioStack is also designed to be able to simply stack on top of the EKM Push or other ioStacks as an option to get power and RS485 via the stacking connectors.

Great to hear you have ideas of how you can use the ioStack to sense water tank levels, well water levels, water pressure, water flow, water flow rates, water temperature, pump runtime timing, float switches, dc voltages, and switch states. These are all use cases the ioStack is designed to support amongst many others. In fact this widget is showing the real-time state of a water tank in California (in percentage full, and in gallons of water stored):

https://widget.ekmmetering.com/widget/? ... e_lines=34