Development of Energy Meter Reading Using Zigbee

Abstract

Automatic Meter Reading (AMR) is a system that is currently implemented to replace the conventional method of meter reading. There are two method of AMR; wired and wireless. Wired AMR poses many disadvantages such as cost ineffective and noise intolerant. Whereas wireless AMR applied only to large industries and large power consumer. This Energy Meter Reading using ZigBee project was done to comprise all electrical consumer from domestic user to industrial user. Using the conventional technique, sometimes, energy meter officer are unable to finish their work due to the blockage occurred during the meter reading process. Some of the problems are inaccessible meter and bad weather. This situation results to estimated reading which is definitely incorrect bill sent to consumer. This project is aimed to prevent this problem from take place. This project was done to simplify the task of utilities company TNB worker, energy meter officer. Using ZigBee as the wireless module, the number of energy meter reading can be taken at a time extend depend on how much meter the ZigBee can reach in one channel of the mesh topology. ZigBee RF module are only able to communicate between them in their channel. They cannot connected mobile devices or PC through Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. To connect to PC, a USB adapter is required. This project emphasize the usage of ZigBee as the wireless module. ZigBee support most all of the network topology from point-to-point to mesh topology. This is the main reason why ZigBee is chosen in this project. As for the microcontroller, Arduino Uno is picked for its simplicity and its common coding language. LCD is added to the project for the consumer to track their electricity usage. In addition, micro SD is used for data logging purpose. This way, consumer will be more aware what used up their electricity. From the data log, consumer can track electricity usage over time and kW usage every minute/hour. The ZigBee from coordinator are able to communicate with each other to send and receive data from end devices (energy meter). By sending command to end devices, coordinator are able to retrieve the meter reading wirelessly.