blog/data/2023-05-19-meter-bus-debian.txt

   1 Title: wmbusmeters, parse data from your utility meter - nice free software
   2 Tags: english, debian, nice free software
   3 Date: 2023-05-19 21:50
   4
   5 <p>There is a European standard for reading utility meters like water,
   6 gas, electricity or heat distribution meters.  The
   7 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meter-Bus">Meter-Bus standard
   8 (EN 13757-2, EN 13757-3 and EN 13757–4)</a> provide a cross vendor way
   9 to talk to and collect meter data.  I ran into this standard when I
  10 wanted to monitor some heat distribution meters, and managed to find
  11 free software that could do the job.  The meters in question broadcast
  12 encrypted messages with meter information via radio, and the hardest
  13 part was to track down the encryption keys from the vendor.  With this
  14 in place I could set up a MQTT gateway to submit the meter data for
  15 graphing.</p>
  16
  17 <p>The free software systems in question,
  18 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/rtl-wmbus">rtl-wmbus</a> to
  19 read the messages from a software defined radio, and
  20 <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/wmbusmeters">wmbusmeters</a> to
  21 decrypt and decode the content of the messages, is working very well
  22 and allowe me to get frequent updates from my meters.  I got in touch
  23 with upstream last year to see if there was any interest in publishing
  24 the packages via Debian.  I was very happy to learn that Fredrik
  25 Öhrström volunteered to maintain the packages, and I have since
  26 assisted him in getting Debian package build rules in place as well as
  27 sponsoring the packages into the Debian archive.  Sadly we completed
  28 it too late for them to become part of the next stable Debian release
  29 (Bookworm).  The wmbusmeters package just cleared the NEW queue.  It
  30 will need some work to fix a built problem, but I expect Fredrik will
  31 find a solution soon.</p>
  32
  33 <p>If you got a infrastructure meter supporting the Meter Bus
  34 standard, I strongly recommend having a look at these nice
  35 packages.</p>
  36
  37 <p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
  38 activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
  39 <b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>