With increasing requirements for automated meter reading (AMR) capabilities for water, heat and gas meters, many utilities have decided to use MID-certified “plug-and-play” retrofit modules for already deployed mechanical meters. This has become a viable option for a complete replacement with purely electronic meters before the lifetime expires.
Although the following concept had been developed for a mechanical water retrofit module, the principle of operation is media agnostic (heat and gas) and fully applicable to electronic direct drive meters (no mechanical gear box).
To address the current market requirements, this design uses 16-bit RL78 MCU core technology. However, in order to address possible future market trends, especially with respect to more complex communication schemes, this design is flexible enough to use other appropriate Renesas MCUs.
System Benefits:
Renesas' Lab on the Cloud is an online environment where Renesas solutions, including popular evaluation boards, winning combinations and software, are hosted in a remote lab that customers access and test online.
This solution easily attaches the sensor board to any type of mechanical water meter with metalized index wheel and detects with it, both RPM as well as the rotation direction.
Renesas' complementary product portfolios of Analog + Power + Embedded Processing + Connectivity work together to deliver comprehensive solutions. Our product experts have developed "Winning Combinations," compelling product combinations that help our customers accelerate their designs and get to market faster.