Comments on: Laser power meter sensor

By: mel

mel — Mon, 02 May 2011 18:22:07 +0000

how do you do it with the electronic meters?

By: Joel

Joel — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 22:16:20 +0000

So how do you do that? In my area they save money installing digital metres, but they raise rates every few months!

By: Danny

Danny — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 19:29:26 +0000

The new meters are variable. I’m currently in Europe and have noticed that the values alter from area to area, but I can tell you guys there is a way to hack it, without touching the meter and it doesn’t send any alarms back to the central as it still shows the usage, it just doesn’t accumulate it :)

By: Andrew

Andrew — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 03:27:10 +0000

I deeply question accuracy of these new digital meters as well as I even more deeply question honesty of these power companies. Look, I am only heating my house with a heat pump to just 60F and it was between 28F and 42F in the last 24 hours and it ran into $9 for 24 hours which is way to much for one day! U believe with the new digital power meters the power company can now “add” to the meter secretly, so we pay more for what they don;t deliver! I am now watching my power meter every day and i noticed some sudden jumps in numbers without any reason or higher usage of power by my house. Also, last year or in 2008 when they were installing these new digital power meters there was about $60 jump in power meter readings on the day of installation. I protested it, but power company refuses to explain or credit this money to me. The last thing we want is power companies cheating their customers in such a NASTY way using the new digital “technology”! SCEG South Carolina “customer”.

By: brijesh

brijesh — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 09:38:13 +0000

i have requred some information for stop the digital eletric meter

By: ahmed

ahmed — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 11:23:27 +0000

plz send me more information

By: chetan

chetan — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 08:32:03 +0000

Can you plz post the tutorial or video of this, am very exited to learn it.

By: BnE

BnE — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 09:21:36 +0000

not sure if this post is still active i’m curious, wouldn’t the broadband over power technolgy especially where it concerns turning on and off service be a huge security concern, couldn;t someone/group use this technology to tamper with those services, eg terriost group, other person with ill intention. Also on another note the best place to monitor your electrical consumption is thru a device on the line side of your meter such as the device chupa mentions in post 4, only because the laser idea relizes on the magnetic coils spinning the disk properly, which causes the meter to work the way it does, to be in good working order and if that where the case than your meter would be accurate.

By: Nate

Nate — Tue, 29 May 2007 19:58:30 +0000

This guy has done more than engery.. Water, Gas, just about everything. Really kinda neat for home monitoring.

http://bwired.nl

By: thomas

thomas — Tue, 29 May 2007 05:49:59 +0000

congratulations on your new house. can’t wait to see what you’re going to do to it!

By: Mark

Mark — Sat, 26 May 2007 19:57:40 +0000

Where I live in NC, the local power company Progress Energy, has moved to replacing meters with ones that actually are using the broadband over powerline technology.

I was surprised that they would be using such a new technology , but its a very rural area and I guess its cheaper than sending someone out to pick up the rf or read the meters. I have an uncle that is an electrical engineer with them , that told me what they were doing. He also said they now have the ability to turn on /off power at these homes with a single command at the main offices.

heres a link to the tech they are using:
http://tdworld.com/info_systems/vendor_updates/BPL-electric-meter/

By: Freak

Freak — Sat, 26 May 2007 18:57:21 +0000

When I worked at a company who made electricity meters, another engineer had produced a prototype device that attached to the front of a mechanical meter (like this one) but used an LED+optical receiver to ‘profile’ the reflection of the disc and spot when it repeats (i.e. one revolution completed). One that I played with used the optical interface (what appears to be two spots surrounded by a large metal washer) that are present on most digital meters (as a hint, try sending /?[CR][LF] at about 9600… ;-)

By: David Seymour

David Seymour — Sat, 26 May 2007 12:37:41 +0000

Here in the UK, some digital meters have an LED which flashes once for every watt-hour. Very easy to interface!

By: chupa

chupa — Sat, 26 May 2007 01:40:17 +0000

Im sure the signals the Rf meters send out "SPOOF PROOF" but I believe anythings possible. With the right equipment/info it would be possible to spoof the signal. And yes its probably illegal. But like i said before, you could also maybe use the information to display the info on a device in your house. Im gona do a little research on the matter. The maker of the meter is Itron. The model is Centron: http://www.itron.com/pages/products_detail.asp?id=itr_000240.xml
FCC ID: SK9C1A-3

By: Stephen

Stephen — Fri, 25 May 2007 21:52:42 +0000

chupa, I too live in Pinellas County,FL and was going to post about the rf meters. I would think trying to spoof the signal would be a bad thing. I mean, they no doubt thought of that themselves before they installed the units, so they must have some way of being sure the signals they get are legit. And I would be willing to bet that if they caught someone spoofing the signal they would 1) take them to court and 2) cut off their power, permanently.

I like the clamp idea though. It would be nice to get a 'second opinion' on how much power you're really using, just in-case those meters from the power company aren't as honest as they may seem ;)