Has anyone received NV Energy or Las Vegas Valley Water District meter readings

[chibiconsulting]

First off , thanks @bemasher for a great bit of software.
I live in the Las Vegas, NV area and after setting up rtlamr it immediately started receiving gas company meters on the default 912Mzh setting with SCM after testing all message types, it now gets both SCM & SCM+ consistently receiving 25 - 30 gas meters or so, at about two times a minute. Was able to find mine right away in the flood of data. Wow! Cool! This will be useful in the winter.
Has anyone found either NV Energy or Las Vegas Valley Water District meters? If so, what frequency / message types?

[lvilluminati]

Hi there, funny enough I live in the Vegas area as well, on the Southwest side. Mostly what I receive is water meters (the IDs usually start with a 7). That one is definitely SCM+, never seen SCM packets. I think my gas meter only transmits when it's being read (wake up I believe it's called), I haven't seen one yet but my meter reading date is today so I may see one. I do get a ton of readings for device type 12 which does correspond to gas meters, but none of the device IDs are anywhere close to mine. Almost all the readings I get for type 12 the ID starts with a 9, whereas mine starts with a 2. I have only been running RTLAMR for about a month so like I said I am still waiting to see if my gas readings are triggered.

I'm pretty sure you will not see any from your NVEnergy meter, I BELIEVE (not totally sure) that Sensus/FlexNet meters use a proprietary and encrypted network to communicate, although I couldn't find whether it's RF based or PLC (data over power lines) based. I have read a few places that meter readings are sent every 15 minutes so if they were using a standard ERT protocol, you should see tons of them.

[chibiconsulting]

Interesting. I guess that depending on when each neighborhood is built, it gets a different combination of Electric/Gas/Water meters with different transmitter capabilities. I am getting both SCM and SCM+ for Gas and very little for Water & Electric. Are all of the meters you have found been on the default frequency center of 912600155? I am wondering if the Water or Electric are on a different frequency.

For reference, here is a few days summary for frequency center of 912600155 near my house. (table separator "|") *** rtlamr flag of -unique=true to only count new meter readings, or the count totals would be ridiculous.

Times Counted | Meter Ids | Format | Type
1 | 3XXXXXX | SCM | 13 Water
84 | 4XXXXXX | SCM | 12 Gas
1 | 5XXXXXX | SCM+ | 0x28 Electric
45 | 6XXXXXX | SCM | 9 Gas
48 | 7XXXXXX | SCM+ | 9 Gas
37 | 9XXXXXX | SCM+ | 9 Gas

Type reference:
Electric: 04, 05, 07, 08
Gas: 02, 09, 12
Water: 11, 13
For SCM+, Least significant nibble is equivalent to SCM's endpoint type field. So 0x28 = 8, 0x9c = 12, 0xAB = 11.

The one type 13 Water and one type 0x28(8) Electric seem to be the exceptions for me. Maybe a data error on my part.

[lvilluminati]

Yes, I get mostly type 11 (Water) readings, almost all with an ID beginning with 7 (which correlates to my water meter), and a lot of type 12 (Gas) readings, mostly starting with 9 (which does not correlate with my gas meter), but never my own meter that has an ID starting with 2 (at least as it's printed on the gas meter). I have not tried being a weirdo and looking at my neighbors gas meter IDs to see if theirs are similar 😅

Maybe I'll try listening to SCM for a while to see if I receive anything, but last time I tried, I got nothing.

Interesting you do not get any water meter readings. Have you tried opening the water utility cover on your sidewalk to look at your ERT meter ID?

Also, I have a few types with 1 reading that I assume are noise that have nonsense IDs or other data, but somehow passed the checksum. I also have a couple that make more sense, but have an ID length of 9 instead of the usual 8. Here are all the device types I have received so far:

DeviceType	Count
0x9c	171107
0xab	13772
0xdc	2
0xbc	3
0x5d	1
0xeb	1
0xf1	1
0x52	1
0x98	1
0xed	1
0x49	1

[lvilluminati]

Actually, looking at this again, it appears I get mostly gas meters... just never mine 😆

[chibiconsulting]

Yeah, the number on the water meter is the same as on the water bill, the id starts with 1XXXXXX, no matches at all. Starting some testing in the 460Mhz range as the LVVWD has some frequencies in that range, but no idea if that will show anything, or how long that will take.

If you set the message type to -msgtype=scm,scm+ you will get both type of meter readings.

Regarding your Gas meter, what type of antenna are you using? If all the meters you read are further away, maybe your signal is too powerful. Try a different antenna. {or location.} Also, there is a gain setting in the rtlamr configuration, [-gainbyindex=0: set gain by index]. Unknown what index values might be useful.