There is a European standard for reading utility meters like water, gas, electricity or heat distribution meters. The Meter-Bus standard (EN 13757-2, EN 13757-3 and EN 13757–4) provide a cross vendor way to talk to and collect meter data. I ran into this standard when I wanted to monitor some heat distribution meters, and managed to find free software that could do the job. The meters in question broadcast encrypted messages with meter information via radio, and the hardest part was to track down the encryption keys from the vendor. With this in place I could set up a MQTT gateway to submit the meter data for graphing.
The free software systems in question, rtl-wmbus to read the messages from a software defined radio, and wmbusmeters to decrypt and decode the content of the messages, is working very well and allowe me to get frequent updates from my meters. I got in touch with upstream last year to see if there was any interest in publishing the packages via Debian. I was very happy to learn that Fredrik Öhrström volunteered to maintain the packages, and I have since assisted him in getting Debian package build rules in place as well as sponsoring the packages into the Debian archive. Sadly we completed it too late for them to become part of the next stable Debian release (Bookworm). The wmbusmeters package just cleared the NEW queue. It will need some work to fix a built problem, but I expect Fredrik will find a solution soon.
If you got a infrastructure meter supporting the Meter Bus standard, I strongly recommend having a look at these nice packages.
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