Transmitter w/20 year battery

10/1/2007 8:01:58 PMPeter G. Balazsy

I posted this musing question on ARF too but for those here who do often frequent that site I thought I'd pose the question here as well.

My town just notified me that they are replacing my old-style standard water meter tomorrow with the new radio-transmitter type.

A truck drives down the city streets and sends radio signals out that "wake" up my water meter to transmit the reading back to the truck.

I asked about how it's powered and they say it has a 20 year + battery.
So I was really impressed about that and wondered why we don't often see such long life batteries in other things. But maybe it has to do with the fact that it is so very infrequently used or needed to be activated .. so 20 years is effectively the shelf-life?

OR... maybe as the water meter turns the gears... could it possibly be also turning some kind of a tiny generator/charger?
What do you guys think?

10/1/2007 10:02:21 PMEdd

Automatic Water Metering..... or gas... or elect or whatever ?

Powered by a big 'ole lithium-yum-yum "D" cell...on steroids... and multiple mounts available for interfacing into different brands of mechanical meters, or using built in flowmeters. Also, remote off mounting of the RF electronics if required.( A meter that is within a hole in the ground).

Unit is using a standby receiver that is constantly monitoring for an incoming digitally encoded signal for that meter. Upon reception it gathers required data and spits it out as a very short higher power RF burst of telemetrical digital info to be received and decoded by the meter reader.

Some brands working on ~1.427-1.43 gigs and others on a lower 910-920 and 952-956 Mhz band.

Tech Ref:....... HERE

73's de Edd

:I posted this musing question on ARF too but for those here who do often frequent that site I thought I'd pose the question here as well.
:
:My town just notified me that they are replacing my old-style standard water meter tomorrow with the new radio-transmitter type.
:
:A truck drives down the city streets and sends radio signals out that "wake" up my water meter to transmit the reading back to the truck.
:
:I asked about how it's powered and they say it has a 20 year + battery.
:So I was really impressed about that and wondered why we don't often see such long life batteries in other things. But maybe it has to do with the fact that it is so very infrequently used or needed to be activated .. so 20 years is effectively the shelf-life?
:
:OR... maybe as the water meter turns the gears... could it possibly be also turning some kind of a tiny generator/charger?
:What do you guys think?
:

10/2/2007 1:15:38 AMMark

I was at a metering convention in Ames Iowa this year and had a chance to talk with some guys from the bigger metering companies. I had the same question about the use of the generator in the meter head for charging the transmitter battery. They said that they don't use a charging circuit just a really good battery.

MRO

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:
:Automatic Water Metering..... or gas... or elect or whatever ?
:
:Powered by a big 'ole lithium-yum-yum "D" cell...on steroids... and multiple mounts available for interfacing into different brands of mechanical meters, or using built in flowmeters. Also, remote off mounting of the RF electronics if required.( A meter that is within a hole in the ground).
:
:Unit is using a standby receiver that is constantly monitoring for an incoming digitally encoded signal for that meter. Upon reception it gathers required data and spits it out as a very short higher power RF burst of telemetrical digital info to be received and decoded by the meter reader.
:
:Some brands working on ~1.427-1.43 gigs and others on a lower 910-920 and 952-956 Mhz band.
:
:Tech Ref:....... HERE
:
:
:73's de Edd
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::I posted this musing question on ARF too but for those here who do often frequent that site I thought I'd pose the question here as well.
::
::My town just notified me that they are replacing my old-style standard water meter tomorrow with the new radio-transmitter type.
::
::A truck drives down the city streets and sends radio signals out that "wake" up my water meter to transmit the reading back to the truck.
::
::I asked about how it's powered and they say it has a 20 year + battery.
::So I was really impressed about that and wondered why we don't often see such long life batteries in other things. But maybe it has to do with the fact that it is so very infrequently used or needed to be activated .. so 20 years is effectively the shelf-life?
::
::OR... maybe as the water meter turns the gears... could it possibly be also turning some kind of a tiny generator/charger?
::What do you guys think?
::

10/2/2007 10:43:31 AMBill J.

I am amazed to occasionally find a 60 year old button bias cell still working and even older 'C' batteries that still have a bit of life.