Design and implementation of centralized reading system on analog postpaid water meter

Abstract

Local water supply company in Indonesia still uses analog water meter, hence the data recording of customer’ water usage was carried out by officers manually. It is certainly an inefficient and risky method that could produce errors. Moreover, not all water meter data could be recorded at the time officers come to the location, for example in vacant houses, that could causing customers suffer the consequences such as fine for late payment. In this study, we proposed a new water meter reading system design which contains a conversion device that could convert analog water usage data into the digital one, installed in existing analog meter. The converted data would be transmitted to local concentrator using a 433 MHz wireless transceiver network and sent to the server that acts as monitoring center via cellular networks. The process of digitizing the water meter does not need to be done by replacing the existing analog water meters. Thus, the investment costs of the water meter digitalization process would be relatively cheaper and it could be a solution for increasing the recording efficiency and accuracy of customer’s water usage data.