I subscribe to the Arduino forum. Today I read a post from user in the UK who was having issues with his gas furnace. He had been working on this problem for about 8 months and came to the conclusion that his water meter having being changed to a Smart water meter was the source of his problem.
After reading this I googles "smart water meter interference" and was floored about the quantity of posts from USA and UK and probably other countries.
So if you have undetermined issues with your radio devices this is something you might consider.
Smart meters reporting electric and to a related extent gas also create this problem on Zigbee and maybe WiFi, especially when not establishing their WAN/HAN connection successfully as they continually channel hop.
As they are unable to make mine connect successfully 2 years since installation (Octopus UK - totally inept, left hands don't know what right hands are 'not' doing) I have asked for mine to be removed and replaced with a dumb meter.
GREAT.... its one thing when I have control over the devices in my house that I can fix if they cause problems, but if my utilities start introducing issues and I have no control over it this will drive me MAD!
I got a notice last week they wanted to change my water meter to a new smart one and I never called them back to arange it. I don't plan to either after reading this. If they change it and my stuff starts to break because of it, they will never come and fix it.
Ha, I thought the same thing, so when they installed my smart water meter, I quickly covered it with some heavy duty aluminum foil. Probably should have used chicken wire? Or I could accidentally hit it with my nail gun...oopps.
It must be extremely low power, as it has no power feed at all, probably just a battery. The display doesn't even light up until you shine a flashlight on it
Yep. I had the same problem when I had a smart gas and electric meters fitted.
It trashed my zigbee network.
I had to change my hubs zigbee channels to get round the issue.
I did raise a thread about it maybe a year ago now.
I had a new Smart meter installed a year or so ago. My Z-wave, Zigbee and WiFi have not been effected by it. From what I read not all Smart Meters are created equal.
One of the most popular brands that US municipalities have bought into (ITRON) has the following on their field data collection communicators. Seems in the range of some of the old landline wireless home phones, some alarm systems...and SMACK on the US Freq for Z-Wave!....but well clear of WiFi, and Zigbee.
I don't understand your point. I don't know the RF term "walking all over".
Zigbee operates in an unlicensed band of frequencies.
Thus, radios are tested with guidance given by Clause 6 of the 802.15.4-2006 Standard.
This standard specifies operation in the unlicensed 2.4 to 2.4835 [21]GHz (worldwide)
I thought it was pretty fair to say that if your product is tested and approved for use in the 900 Mhz band then that's where it will be broadcasting ....if it is a nuisance to bands as far away as 2.4 Ghz I would think that woulda shown up in testing & approval no? Or are you saying that it's signal strength is just a foot stomp to everything nearby transmitting at lessor wattage ?
I don't think these are Zigbee. They state ZigBit. Not sure the difference. Besides my cordless phones are in the 900Mhz band and don't seem to make any interference (that I can tell).
Interesting. It seems like this is an older device (2009) wonder why it hasn't become more common. Perhaps the hubs would need another radio for this module.
