The Development Of Intelligent Concentrator Applied In The Remote Meter Reading System

In 2003, there is a reform of heating charge in north china, collecting fee of household heating and charging for the heat in quantity was used. The heat meter is the only heat metering meter that can be used to meter heat in heating system directly. So it is popularized rapidly and forms a huge heat meter network. Reading, transmitting and managing heat value and state variables manually is obvious unpractical. So the developing and improvement in the remote meter reading system is of great importance with government enacting relevant national standards in recent years.However, because only server has the meter reading right, it is inefficient in traditional meter reading system. M-Bus concentrator can only transmit a few data. So the collection of meter reading system state’s variables is strictly limited. The traditional remote meter reading system has been far from meeting the meter reading demand in increasingly huge heat meter network. So an efficient, intelligent and new non-transparency remote meter reading system is developed in this paper. The hardware and software of concentrator is designed independently. The meter reading efficiency is improved greatly by giving the concentrator the meter reading initiative. Besides, this system can transmit and backup vast data. Its transmission capacity and communication capability is increased further. The main content of this paper is as follows.The reliability design of the concentrator’s software and hardware system. The intelligent concentrator uses SCM as the master control center, use external real time clock to do the timekeeping, SD card to backup vast data and GPRS module to upload data remotely. Sequentially, the function of automatic meter reading, periodic data storage and returning data to server on schedule is realized in this concentrator. There is a special design in power module to avoid connecting in the wrong way. A backup power is added to the real time clock. Electrostatic protection design and level match design of ports is used to improve the reliability of GPRS module circuit. In order to resolve the problem that GPRS module lose connection easily, the heartbeat mechanism is designed.The vast data transmission design of the intellectual concentrator. There is error code when the traditional M-Bus concentrator transmits vast data. The SCM adjusts the circuit characteristic of MBUS host in the intellectual concentrator, which increases the reliability of vast data transmission, reduces power consumption and simplifies the circuit.The reliability test of the intellectual concentrator. The intellectual concentrator can transmit no less than 64 bytes data. The GPRS module can reconnect to the server by 20 seconds after lost connection. The SD card can backup data. This new remote meter reading system can collect data of three millions heat meters every day, which is as 100 times as traditional transparency remote meter reading system does.