Testing for Smart Meter Transmissions

[Titan91]

I have a family member who got a new electric meter on his house. He was assured by the electric company it's not a smart meter, just a digital meter that doesn't transmit on RF. I'm skeptical of that, as it looks exactly like a typical AMI meter. So I took my laptop and RTL-SDR, connected a 2.4GHz wifi antenna (I know, don't have a proper 900MHz antenna) and spent about 10 or 15 minutes browsing the 900MHz ISM band with the antenna a few inches from the meter. I left the gain at 0db the entire time, and turned the decay all the way down in SDRSharp so I could see the permanent peaks on the FFT plot. What I saw were several short bursts of what look like pager type plots every 30 seconds or so just scanning up and down the band. I believe these are from smart meters, with two peaks on each side of each plot. All but one burst was +15db above the noise floor, and the other one unique burst was +25db. I'm still learning about radio, but isn't this significant with no gain whatsoever? Not sure if this is remotely suggestive of the meter transmitting or not. I have a screenshot if needed.

 

[prcguy]

You need to check in the 2.4GHz band, all cell phone bands and possibly 5.8GHz. I did some research on these years ago and some can actually call home to mama over the cell phone network, although most are networked with nearby meters on WiFi so the reader can walk or drive down the street and ping each meter.

Its also possible it will not be transmitting until pinged by the reader.

I have a family member who got a new electric meter on his house. He was assured by the electric company it's not a smart meter, just a digital meter that doesn't transmit on RF. I'm skeptical of that, as it looks exactly like a typical AMI meter. So I took my laptop and RTL-SDR, connected a 2.4GHz wifi antenna (I know, don't have a proper 900MHz antenna) and spent about 10 or 15 minutes browsing the 900MHz ISM band with the antenna a few inches from the meter. I left the gain at 0db the entire time, and turned the decay all the way down in SDRSharp so I could see the permanent peaks on the FFT plot. What I saw were several short bursts of what look like pager type plots every 30 seconds or so just scanning up and down the band. I believe these are from smart meters, with two peaks on each side of each plot. All but one burst was +15db above the noise floor, and the other one unique burst was +25db. I'm still learning about radio, but isn't this significant with no gain whatsoever? Not sure if this is remotely suggestive of the meter transmitting or not. I have a screenshot if needed.

 

[mmckenna]

If it's a meter that transmits data back to the utility, there will be an FCC ID on it somewhere. Run that FCC id through the FCC OET page and it will tell you about the RF section of it.
There are also many types of "smart meters". Some use cellular, some use 900MHz mesh. Without knowing for sure -IF- it's a smart meter, and not know what frequency it's using, you are just making guesses.

An SDR and a 2.4GHz antenna are not going to tell you much. There's a lot of stuff in the 900MHz band, not just smart meters. You could be picking up someones cordless phone, baby monitor, LMR radio system, cellular, or many other kinds of wireless devices.

 

[radioman2008]

I work with utility meters on a daily basis, what is the brand and model number of this meter? also there is a TYPE section on the plate, it might say TYPE C1SC or something similar. if you can provide ALL the plate info i can tell you what some of the other info means.

for example, the Iron Centron series is capable of a variety of different modules to be installed, some DONT have any RF options, while others use 900 or 2.4 or others. there is a new push in meter reading industry to install LTE Cellular modules. i have several Centrons in my home that have various non RF options, one is digital display, the other 2 include a rare analog pointer style and a cyclometer (odometer design) so they do exist.

the Centron seires used to be owned by Schlumberger, who at the time also owned the Neptune water meter brand. in the mid 2000s Schlumberger split from Neptune then getting bought out by Itron a little later so they both got to share the AMR technology. our meter reader handhelds will detect both Itron watthour meters and neptune water meters.

the Neptune and Itron meters use the 900 ham band with spread spectrum technology. the Neptune R900i seires from 2006 to mid 2015 are designed to transmit 100Mw every 15 seconds or so and the latest series of the R900i mid 2015 to present will also transmit a high power 1 Watt pulse about 1 time and hour

 

[z31jaime]

I agree I work with them as well. post a picture of the face

 

[Titan91]

Sorry for the late reply. Attached is a photo of the meter with customer data removed.