How to Get Water and Gas Data from Omnimeter
Posted: Sun Dec 26, 2021 10:22 pm
Hi All,
I'm trying to grab water and gas use data from our rental property (we already have separate electrical service)--we're planning on installing EKM meters for water (State of California SB7 law requires us to use submeters separate from the main unit) and gas.
The plan is to wire the meters to the Omnimeter and then poll the Omnimeter with a Raspberry Pi Pico and transmit the data using a low-data rate IoT cellular system (LTE-M). I had originally considered the EKM Push 3 as a simpler off-the-shelf solution, but I don't need realtime data and can't justify the monthly data costs that would require. I only need usage data in order to calculate the monthly gas and water bill, which should be no more than a megabyte of data traffic a month. (IoT data plans are as low as $3 a month)
All of the example data dictionaries and sample output digests provide a wealth of information on power, but nothing on gas or water. Presumably it would be Pulse Count1 and 2 and the ratios, since the meters themselves would transmit pulses to the Omnimeter, but all of the examples posted show zeroes.
I suppose I could also obviate the Omnimeter and just have the Pico count the pulses, but that's a level of complexity I don't have time to explore at the moment (Future project). At the moment, I'd rather have the Pi Pico use the RS-485 adapter and use a MicroPython script to poll the Omnimeter, parse the data and push it over LTE once a week. I can't install the meters in the unit until I have something workable, but I don't have any means of safely simulating gas or water use with the meters.
I'm happy to post progress to the forum and publish the code and schematics on github once it's at an operable level of development. Any help in grabbing and parsing the data would be welcome.
Thanks
I'm trying to grab water and gas use data from our rental property (we already have separate electrical service)--we're planning on installing EKM meters for water (State of California SB7 law requires us to use submeters separate from the main unit) and gas.
The plan is to wire the meters to the Omnimeter and then poll the Omnimeter with a Raspberry Pi Pico and transmit the data using a low-data rate IoT cellular system (LTE-M). I had originally considered the EKM Push 3 as a simpler off-the-shelf solution, but I don't need realtime data and can't justify the monthly data costs that would require. I only need usage data in order to calculate the monthly gas and water bill, which should be no more than a megabyte of data traffic a month. (IoT data plans are as low as $3 a month)
All of the example data dictionaries and sample output digests provide a wealth of information on power, but nothing on gas or water. Presumably it would be Pulse Count1 and 2 and the ratios, since the meters themselves would transmit pulses to the Omnimeter, but all of the examples posted show zeroes.
I suppose I could also obviate the Omnimeter and just have the Pico count the pulses, but that's a level of complexity I don't have time to explore at the moment (Future project). At the moment, I'd rather have the Pi Pico use the RS-485 adapter and use a MicroPython script to poll the Omnimeter, parse the data and push it over LTE once a week. I can't install the meters in the unit until I have something workable, but I don't have any means of safely simulating gas or water use with the meters.
I'm happy to post progress to the forum and publish the code and schematics on github once it's at an operable level of development. Any help in grabbing and parsing the data would be welcome.
Thanks