Support Watermeter (Kamstrup Multical 21)

[copystring]

Hello everyone,

so a while I try to get my water meter in my smart home. The water meter is placed outside in a metal shaft 2 meters deep. Wifi reception is obviously bad but could be worked around with a long cable for the antenna or similar.
The model is a Kamstrup Multical 21.
There are various ways to get to the data of the water meter. My first choice in via WMBUS however this needs an AES-Key which my provider will not hand out to me for privacy reasons.

So I looked for alternatives.
First I tried the pulse adapter
The way this one works is after pressing the button in the pulse adapter every 10 liters a pulse is send which could be used by for example a esp8266 or so to send it off to mqtt.
Problematic is the fact that sometimes a pulse is missed. Maybe by bad wifi signal or so. This is tedious to correct because I'd have to get the water out of its shaft every time to manually sync the current meter value with my smart home.

After a lot of research I found this device: Poweropti Powerfox PA201901
This can be put on my water meter which communicates via the bidirectional IR-LEDs.
I bought this and tried it out. It can actually read the current meter value with those LEDs. Nice!
Looking at the datasheet I found out Powerfox supports SML-Protokoll and IEC1107. IEC1107 is the same as IEC 61107 right? I believe it go renamed.

There is a similar topic here but I don't know how reliable the information is. Assuming the water meter is in fact using IEC1107/IEC 61107 /?!\r\n (in HEX 2F3F210D0A) needs to be send. I bought an IR read write head and connected to an FTDI which is used by ioBroker.smartmeter setup like this:

Sadly no data is returned.
I also have a oscilloscope (RIGOL DS1054) hooked up to TX and RX of the IR read write head while it was on powerfox to receivce what powerfox is sending. This is also connect to my PC with pulseview but not sure where to go from there.
How do I use that data?

Yeah I could just use powerfox in the end but that's not cool. I want to directly use the IR read write head on the meter. Also it costs a yearly fee after 2-3 years.

Let me know if I'm on the right track with this and if so how we can get this working.

Thank you

Felix

[Apollon77]

Okm,, in fact usage questions are hetter discussed in Forum then on GitHub, bit some infos:

1.) the signon sewuence you told is the default, so remove the one you entered because so it will send wrong stuff
2.) You said the protocol is SML, so why you choose D0 as protocol? select SML please :-)
3.) Remove the hard coded baudrate ... or where you got it from? Because SML by default uses 9600baud ..... SO if enter that
4.) 500 D0 wakecharts is a bit too much ... and agin it is SML ... remove also.

Ideally remove the instance and create new one to get back defaults. Then only change protol to SML and bare minimum changes. Thenset the instace to debug loglevel and show the log - there you see whats received

[copystring]

I'm sure it's not SML. The poweropti supports SML and IEC1107.
The baudrate is the one pulseview guessed when analyzing the sent data. I also tried 9600 before.
The 500 wakes are roughly what the poweropti it sending after starting it up.

[Apollon77]

Ok, then show a debug log please and we will se what the device sends out

[copystring]

That's the thing. There is nothing coming back with the setting I chose.
No or too long answer from Serial Device after last request.

[copystring]

OK. I guess I made a mistake. I changed the SignOn message from ?!\r\n to ?. Still no luck

Check my oscilloscope again and compared the WakeUp message.
This is the WakeUp Message sent by powerfox:

This is the WakeUp sent by this adapter:

Looking closely you can see the baud rate must be wrong.

Maybe the signal captured by the oscilloscope is inverted because what powerfox is sending (TX) is RX on the read write head?
What this adapter is sending would then be TX on the read write head.
Does that make sense?

[evlo]

NOT THE ANSWER, BUT SUGGESTION YOU MIGHT LOOK INTO
some meters I interacted with need wakeup signal at 300baud and correct parity etc.

for IEC62056-21 meters this usually works
baud_rate: 300
data_bits: 7
stop_bits: 1
parity: EVEN

IEC 61107 I dunno, sorry for not having an answer for you, but I think it might worth a try

RX/TX you can try swapping, also first thing to try, if you did not tried yet, is to try interface with the mirror or even white piece of paper, if it reads back what it sends.

Again, this is not an answer just some suggestions, that will hopefully be helpful as i struggled getting everything working with similar interface and similar meters for the first time.

Worst case you can use this https://github.com/jomjol/AI-on-the-edge-device . But if it is in the shaft in the ground it will get foggy and might hard to get proper reading. At leas tmine

Reading bit more
This first edition IEC 62056-21 cancels and replaces the second edition of IEC 61107 published in 1996 and constitutes a technical revision.

[Apollon77]

@copystring Regarding the sign on message ... I told you at the beginningnthat the string is wrong ... If you just now changed it then please re-read anything I posted

[copystring]

OK. I'm sorry. I did read what you wrote. I wasn't sure where to start and if I understood your comment(s) correctly.

Seems like I'm getting closer.
Deleted all data points. Made a new instance. Checked the baud rate again. It is actually 300 not 1200.
This is my setup now:

With this the messages look identical on the oscilloscope to the ones sent by powerfox. Powerfox is sending exactly 30 times 00 as WakeUp and after that 3 times 2F3F210D0A as SignOn.
2F3F210D0A = /?!\r\n

So I set the SignOn message to ?!\r\n. I also tried ? and ?!
But no data is returned with any of those.

[Apollon77]

Please leave the Signon message alone and simply leave empty ... then it is exactly sent correct because you just need the default, but just once.

[copystring]

Ok. Same settings as above but with SignOn empty: No or too long answer from Serial Device after last request.

[Apollon77]

Please show a debug log. Thank you

[Apollon77]

As said: We only send the signon once ... mabe the 30 wakeup chars are then not enough?

[copystring]

Maybe. Changed the 30 to 500.
Here's the log: https://pastebin.com/KUAEiVYf

[Apollon77]

Please post a DEBUG log ... Silly is not helpful in this case. Thank you