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Comment by heywire | Hacker News Reader

SDR has been an endless source of fun for me. I have a half a dozen different rtl dongles hooked up to raspberry pis and my laptop at any one time. Most recently I wrote a program to read the 900MHz broadcasts from my electric and water meters [1]. I'm also using an existing program to monitor our gas meter [2]. rtl_433 is another fun one [3].

[1] https://github.com/shaunhey/ea_receiver [2] https://github.com/bemasher/rtlamr [3] https://github.com/merbanan/rtl_433

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This is a super cool application for this, unfortunately our water meters and stuff in the UK are very basic mechanical devices in most cases still which sucks so none of this fun for me... This does remind me I probably should check out a few other things though, such as ZigBee protocol on my home automation stuff.

The flashing light on an electric meter (assuming you don't have the really old dial type) flashes once per watt-hour, which can be used for measuring.

The SMETS1 and SMETS2 smart meters that you will be getting soon will have ZigBee.... but secured and tied down so although you will be able to sniff the comms... everything will be encrypted.

...We're far too privacy and security conscious in the UK to allow plaintext personal data go over the airwaves...

Been meaning to look into the smart meters here in the U.K. after having them fitted recently. I had horrible thoughts of it all being clear text, so it's nice to know that no one can snoop on my gas and electric usage. I had assumed they were at least working on the 2.4Ghz frequency as it'd dropped out a few times due to interference with other kit.

All comms are end-to-end encrypted, each meter has unique certifications and keys and the data also tends to be stored encrypted on FLASH. The certification also requires the standards authorities to view the source and have strict guidelines on security, robustness, sanitisation of data, etc.

> All comms are end-to-end encrypted... The certification also requires ...strict guidelines on security...

So what you're saying is that, in the UK, your water meter and electrical appliances are required to have a higher level of security than your online browsing is allowed to have?

Gosh

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encryption_ban_proposal_in_the...

hehe... effectively, yes, oh the irony....

You have to consider tho, that the smart meters don't operate on the public internet, its all on a proprietary WAN (government specified).

There are many, many wacky design decisions regarding the UKs smart metering design but they do at least make an effort regarding security and robustness.

433mhz is used in place of the 900mhz broadcasts in Australia

From that project you linked, it decodes "Oregon Scientific Weather Sensor" protocol - but there's several different versions of that. I'll have to have a play with it one day - thanks!

What do your electric/water meters sound like?

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