Recently, my town forced the water meter change on us as the old one was 15 year old. The older meter had wire going outside where somebody could read the meter. The new one has transmitter built in. Trying to figure the new meter reading, I stumbled upon how much and how often it emits the RF signal. I am sure this is red meat for all the usual tinfoil crowd that we have here!
But the reason I am posting it here is to hear from the smart technical crowd as to why the manufacturer did NOT design to restrict the RF emission only on demand rather doing it continuously (aka pulsing every 14 second). I presume it has all the hardware (aka radio chip) already there. Radio receiver needs way less power than radio transmitter. Why not listen until commanded to emit the meter reading? The meter van can command the meter to go in to transmission mode.
Is it just laziness on the part of manufacturer of the smart meters or is there something fundamental limitation that I am missing?
If you are interested, google Neptune e-coder for fascinating read.
But the reason I am posting it here is to hear from the smart technical crowd as to why the manufacturer did NOT design to restrict the RF emission only on demand rather doing it continuously (aka pulsing every 14 second). I presume it has all the hardware (aka radio chip) already there. Radio receiver needs way less power than radio transmitter. Why not listen until commanded to emit the meter reading? The meter van can command the meter to go in to transmission mode.
Is it just laziness on the part of manufacturer of the smart meters or is there something fundamental limitation that I am missing?
If you are interested, google Neptune e-coder for fascinating read.