In the past, meter reading was performed by the meter reader to read the current number of water meters, gas meters and electricity meters of the user, recorded in the meter reading, and brought back to the data center for statistical, summary, billing, etc., which is very inefficient and easy. Errors, the drawbacks of the traditional meter reading fee model have gradually become an obstacle to energy management companies to improve management. Figure 1 Traditional manual meter reading Nowadays, many of our districts use hand-held meter reading machines. The hand-held meter reading machine can be understood as a portable palm-sized computer with strong computing and storage capabilities. After the meter reader reads the meter, the meter reading machine directly uploads the data to the service center. After the server reviews the data, the meter reading machine directly opens the account, prints the bill or various work orders, and the work efficiency is greatly improved. Figure 2 Handheld meter reading instrument But this also requires manual on-site meter reading, printing of bills, and no reduction in labor costs. The development of the Internet of Things has also promoted the promotion of the smart home industry, and the technology iteration of the energy metering industry is also developing rapidly. In fact, there are many wireless technologies in IoT applications, which can form a LAN or a wide area network. The wireless technologies that make up the LAN mainly include Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, zigbee, etc. The wireless technologies that make up the WAN mainly include 3G/4G. The advantages and disadvantages of these wireless technologies are very obvious, as summarized in the following figure. Before the generation of the Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN), it seems that there can only be one between the long distance and the low power. With LPWAN technology, designers can do both, maximizing longer-range communication and lower power consumption while saving additional repeater costs. LoRa is one of the LPWAN communication technologies. It is an ultra-long-range wireless transmission scheme based on spread spectrum technology adopted and promoted by Semtech. Table 1 Comparison of parameters of modern mainstream wireless solutions The biggest advantage of LoRa is low power consumption, easy networking, low cost, long transmission distance and so on. And LoRa is very suitable for large-scale deployment, such as municipal facilities detection in smart cities or wireless meter reading applications, which can greatly reduce the cost of manual work and construction wiring. Figure 3 LoRa wireless meter reading system ZM470SX series module is an industrial grade RF wireless product independently developed by ZLG Zhiyuan Electronics. The module is designed with LoRa modulation technology derived from military tactical communication system, which perfectly solves the problem of ultra-long-distance communication of small data volume in complex environments. Compared with the traditional modulation technology, the ZM470SX series modules also have obvious advantages in suppressing the performance of co-channel interference, which solves the drawbacks that the traditional design scheme cannot simultaneously consider the distance, anti-interference and power consumption. In addition, the module integrates an adjustable power amplifier of +20dBm for applications where long-distance transmission is required and reliability is critical. Table 2 Comparison of parameters between LoRa and ordinary 470 modules ZLG Zhiyuan Electronics has launched the intelligent wireless gateway IoT-3968L for the industrial Internet field, with ARM9 as the core, two-way MiniPCIE interface design, and a variety of optional wireless interface modules (using MiniPCIE interface design, including Wi-Fi, Zigbee, LoRa, GPRS/3G/4G, etc.), which is convenient for customers to quickly build smart Internet of Things gateway products suitable for their own industry. Figure 4 IoT-3968 Wireless Gateway Product Case characteristics: · High reliability: The LoRa module is designed with military modulation technology, which can effectively guarantee the ultra-long-distance transmission of small data in complex environments. · Wide range of collection and copy: LoRa module nodes have large expansion and redundancy, and the access location is unlimited, which can meet the access requirements of cities, mountainous areas and townships; · Low construction cost: The LoRa module is built into the electricity meter and power concentrator, which solves the wiring problem, can be quickly networked, and eliminates the maintenance cost of the later wiring harness. ZLG Zhiyuan Electronics can provide customers with complete solutions from the underlying data transmission and transmission, transmission to control, and provide users with evaluation kits to assist in testing, help users get started quickly, and early launch of terminal products to seize market opportunities. Figure 5 LoRa module evaluation board Remote Controller Socket Converters Remote Power Socket,Remote Control Socket Adaptors,Remote Control Plug Adapters,Remote Control Socket,Remote Power Switch NINGBO COWELL ELECTRONICS & TECHNOLOGY CO., LTD , https://www.cowellsockets.com
