wmbusmeters

The program receives and decodes C1,T1 or S1 telegrams (using the wireless mbus protocol) to acquire utility meter readings. The readings can then be published using MQTT, curled to a REST api, inserted into a database or stored in a log file.

FAQ/WIKI/MANUAL pages

The program runs on GNU/Linux, MacOSX, FreeBSD, and Raspberry Pi.

OS	Status
GNU/Linux
Docker build status
Snap status

Static Scan	Status
Linux G++

Distributions

wmbusmeters package is available on Fedora (version 31 or newer) and can be simply installed by using:

# dnf install wmbusmeters

Availability of wmbusmeters for other Linux distributions can be checked on release-monitoring project page.

Run as a daemon

Remove the wmbus dongle (im871a,amb8465,cul,rc1180) or the generic rtlsdr dongle (RTL2832U) from your computer.

./configure; make; sudo make install will install wmbusmeters as a daemon.

Check the contents of your /etc/wmbusmeters.conf file, assuming it has device=auto:c1 and you are using a im871a,amb8465,rc1180 or cul device, then you can now start the daemon with sudo systemctl start wmbusmeters or you can try it from the command line wmbusmeters auto:c1

Wmbusmeters will scan for wmbus devices every few seconds and detect whenever a device is plugged in or removed.

To have the wmbusmeters daemon start automatically when the computer boots do: sudo systemctl enable wmbusmeters

You can trigger a reload of the config files with sudo killall -HUP wmbusmetersd

(Note! make install only works for GNU/Linux. For MacOSX try to start wmbusmetersd /tmp/thepidfile from a script instead.)

Check the config file /etc/wmbusmeters.conf and edit the device. For example: auto:c1 or im871a:c1 or im871a[457200101056]:t1 or /dev/ttyUSB2:amb8465:c1,t1

Adding a device like auto or im871a will trigger an automatic probe of all serial ttys to auto find or to find on which tty the im871a resides.

If you specify a full device path like /dev/ttyUSB0:im871a:c1 or rtlwmbus or rtl433 then it will not probe the serial devices. If you must be really sure that it will not probe something you can add donotprobe=/dev/ttyUSB0 or donotprobe=all.

You can specify combinations like: device=rc1180:t1 device=auto:c1 to set the rc1180 dongle to t1 but any other auto-detected dongle to c1.

loglevel=normal
# Search for a wmbus device and set it to c1.
device=auto:c1
# But do not probe this serial tty.
donotprobe=/dev/ttyACM2
logtelegrams=false
format=json
meterfiles=/var/log/wmbusmeters/meter_readings
meterfilesaction=overwrite
meterfilesnaming=name
meterfilestimestamp=day
logfile=/var/log/wmbusmeters/wmbusmeters.log
shell=/usr/bin/mosquitto_pub -h localhost -t wmbusmeters/$METER_ID -m "$METER_JSON"
alarmshell=/usr/bin/mosquitto_pub -h localhost -t wmbusmeters_alarm -m "$ALARM_TYPE $ALARM_MESSAGE"
alarmtimeout=1h
alarmexpectedactivity=mon-sun(00-23)
ignoreduplicates=false

Then add a meter file in /etc/wmbusmeters.d/MyTapWater

name=MyTapWater
type=multical21:c1
id=12345678
key=00112233445566778899AABBCCDDEEFF

Now plugin your wmbus dongle. Wmbusmeters should start automatically, check with tail -f /var/log/syslog and tail -f /var/log/wmbusmeters/wmbusmeters.log (If you are using an rtlsdr dongle, then make sure the binaries /usr/bin/rtl_sdr and /usr/bin/rtl_wmbus exists and are executable. If not you will see the error message (rtlwmbus) error: when starting as daemon, wmbusmeters expects /usr/bin/rtl_sdr to exist! and the daemon will refuse to start.)

The latest reading of the meter can also be found here: /var/log/wmbusmeters/meter_readings/MyTapWater

You can use several ids using id=1111111,2222222,3333333 or you can listen to all meters of a certain type id=* or you can suffix with star id=8765* to match all meters with a given prefix. If you supply at least one positive match rule, then you can add negative match rules as well. For example id=*,!2222* which will match all meter ids, except those that begin with 2222.

You can add the static json data "address":"RoadenRd 456","city":"Stockholm" to every json message with the wmbusmeters.conf setting:

json_address=RoadenRd 456
json_city=Stockholm

If you add json_floor=5 to the meter file MyTapWater, then you can have the meter tailored static json "floor":"5" added to telegrams handled by that particular meter.

If you are running on a Raspberry PI with flash storage and you relay the data to another computer using a shell command (mosquitto_pub or curl or similar) then you might want to remove meterfiles and meterfilesaction to minimize the writes to the local flash file system.

If you specify --metefilesaction=append --meterfilestimestamp=day then wmbusmeters will append all todays received telegrams in for example the file Water_2019-12-11, the day after the telegrams will be recorded in Water_2019-12-12. You can change the resolution to day,hour,minute and micros. Micros means that every telegram gets their own file.

Run using config files

If you cannot install as a daemon, then you can also start wmbusmeters in your terminal using the config files in /etc/wmbusmeters.

wmbusmeters --useconfig=/

Or you can start wmbusmeters with your own config files:

wmbusmeters --useconfig=/home/me/.config/wmbusmeters

If you already have config with a device specified, and you want to use the config with another device. You might have multiple meters in the config that you want to listen to. Then you can add --device to override the settings in the config. Like this:

wmbusmeters --useconfig=/home/me/.config/wmbusmeters --device=rtlwmbus

You must have both --useconfig= and --device= for it to work.

The files/dir should then be located here: /home/me/.config/wmbusmeters/etc/wmbusmeters.conf and /home/me/.config/wmbusmeters/etc/wmbusmeters.d

When running using config files then you can trigger a reload of the config files using sudo killall -HUP wmbusmetersd or killall -HUP wmbusmeters depending on if you are running as a daemon or not.

Running without config files, good for experimentation and test.

wmbusmeters version: 1.0.3
Usage: wmbusmeters {options} <device> ( [meter_name] [meter_type]{:<modes>} [meter_id] [meter_key] )*

As <options> you can use:

    --addconversions=<unit>+ add conversion to these units to json and meter env variables (GJ)
    --alarmexpectedactivity=mon-fri(08-17),sat-sun(09-12) Specify when the timeout is tested, default is mon-sun(00-23)
    --alarmshell=<cmdline> invokes cmdline when an alarm triggers
    --alarmtimeout=<time> Expect a telegram to arrive within <time> seconds, eg 60s, 60m, 24h during expected activity.
    --debug for a lot of information
    --donotprobe=<tty> do not auto-probe this tty. Use multiple times for several ttys or specify "all" for all ttys.
    --exitafter=<time> exit program after time, eg 20h, 10m 5s
    --format=<hr/json/fields> for human readable, json or semicolon separated fields
    --json_xxx=yyy always add "xxx"="yyy" to the json output and add shell env METER_xxx=yyy
    --listenvs=<meter_type> list the env variables available for the given meter type
    --listfields=<meter_type> list the fields selectable for the given meter type
    --listmeters list all meter types
    --listmeters=<search> list all meter types containing the text <search>
    --logfile=<file> use this file instead of stdout
    --logtelegrams log the contents of the telegrams for easy replay
    --ignoreduplicates ignore duplicate telegrams, remember the last 10 telegrams
    --meterfiles=<dir> store meter readings in dir
    --meterfilesaction=(overwrite|append) overwrite or append to the meter readings file
    --meterfilesnaming=(name|id|name-id) the meter file is the meter's: name, id or name-id
    --meterfilestimestamp=(never|day|hour|minute|micros) the meter file is suffixed with a
                          timestamp (localtime) with the given resolution.
    --nodeviceexit if no wmbus devices are found, then exit immediately
    --oneshot wait for an update from each meter, then quit
    --resetafter=<time> reset the wmbus dongle regularly, default is 23h
    --selectfields=id,timestamp,total_m3 select fields to be printed
    --separator=<c> change field separator to c
    --shell=<cmdline> invokes cmdline with env variables containing the latest reading
    --silent do not print informational messages nor warnings
    --useconfig=<dir> load config files from dir/etc
    --usestderr write notices/debug/verbose and other logging output to stderr (the default)
    --usestdoutforlogging write debug/verbose and logging output to stdout
    --verbose for more information

As you can use:

auto:c1, to have wmbusmeters probe for devices: im871a, amb8465, cul, rc1180 or rtlsdr (spawns rtlwmbus).

im871a:c1 to start all connected im871a devices in c1 mode, ignore all other devices.

/dev/ttyUSB1:amb8465:c1 to start only this device on this tty. Do not probe for other devices.

If you have two im871a you can supply both of them with their unique id:s and set different listening modes: im871a[12345678]:c1 im871a[11223344]:t1

You can also specify rtlwmbus and if you set the serial in the rtlsdr dongle using rtl_eeprom -s 1234 you can also refer to a specific rtlsdr dongle like this rtlwmbus[1234].

/dev/ttyUSB0:amb8465, if you have an amb8465 dongle assigned to ttyUSB0. Other suffixes are im871a,cul.

/dev/ttyUSB0, to have wmbusmeters auto-detect amb8465, im871a, rc1180 or cul device.

/dev/ttyUSB0:38400, to have wmbusmeters set the baud rate to 38400 and listen for raw wmbus telegrams. These telegrams are expected to have the data link layer crc bytes removed already!

rtlwmbus, to spawn the background process: "rtl_sdr -f 868.95M -s 1600000 - 2>/dev/null | rtl_wmbus" for each attached rtlsdr dongle.

rtlwmbus:868.9M, to tune to this fq instead.

rtl433, to spawn the background process: "rtl_433 -F csv -f 868.95M"

rtl433:868.9M, to tune to this fq instead.

rtlwmbus:CMD(), to specify the entire background process command line that is expected to produce rtlwbus compatible output. Likewise for rtl433.

stdin, to read raw binary telegrams from stdin. These telegrams are expected to have the data link layer crc bytes removed already!

telegrams.bin, to read raw wmbus telegrams from this file. These telegrams are expected to have the data link layer crc bytes removed already!

stdin:rtlwmbus, to read telegrams formatted using the rtlwmbus format from stdin. Works for rtl433 as well.

telegrams.msg:rtlwmbus, to read rtlwmbus formatted telegrams from this file. Works for rtl433 as well.

simulation_abc.txt, to read telegrams from the file (the file must have a name beginning with simulation_....) expecting the same format that is the output from --logtelegrams. This format also supports replay with timing.

As meter quadruples you specify:

• <meter_name> a mnemonic for this particular meter (!Must not contain a colon ':' character!)
• <meter_type> one of the supported meters (can be suffixed with : to specify which mode you expect the meter to use when transmitting)
• <meter_id> an 8 digit mbus id, usually printed on the meter
• <meter_key> an encryption key unique for the meter if the meter uses no encryption, then supply NOKEY

Supported wmbus dongles:
IMST 871a (im871a)
Amber 8465 (amb8465)
CUL family (cul)
Radiocraft (RC1180)
rtl_wmbus (rtlwmbus)
rtl_433 (rtl433)

Supported water meters:
Apator at-wmbus-08   (apator08) (non-standard protocol)
Apator at-wmbus-16-2 (apator162) (non-standard protocol, spurious decoding errors)
Apator Ultrimis (ultrimis)
Aquametro/Integra Topas Es Kr (topaseskr)
Bmeters Hydrodigit (hydrodigit) (partly non-standard protocol)
Diehl/Sappel IZAR RC 868 I R4 PL (izar) (non-standard protocol)
Diehl HYDRUS (hydrus)
Elster Merlin 868 (emerlin868)
Elster V200H (ev200)
Maddalena EVO 868 (evo868)
Honeywell Q400 (q400)
Kamstrup Multical 21 (multical21)
Kamstrup flowIQ 2200 (flowiq2200)
Kamstrup flowIQ 3100 (flowiq3100)
Sontex Supercom 587 (supercom587)
Sensus iPERL (iperl)
Techem MK Radio 3 and 4 (mkradio3,mkradio4) (non-standard protocols)
Waterstar M (waterstarm)

Currently not supported, please help!
Diehl/Sappel ACQUARIUS/IZAR R3 (izar3)

Supported heat cost allocators:
Innotas EurisII  (eurisii)
Qundis Q caloric (qcaloric)
Sontex 868 (sontex868)
Techem FHKV data II/III (fhkvdataiii)
Siemens WHE542 (whe5x)

Supported heat meters:
Heat meter Techem Compact V / Compact Ve (compact5) (non-standard protocol)
Heat meter Techem Vario 4 (vario451) (non-standard protocol)
Heat meter Kamstrup Multical 302 (multical302) (in C1 mode, please open issue for T1 mode)
Heat and Cooling meter Kamstrup Multical 403 (multical403) (in C1 mode)
Heat and Cooling meter Kamstrup Multical 603 (multical603) (in C1 mode)
Heat and Cooling meter Kamstrup Multical 803 (multical803) (in C1 mode)

Supported room sensors:
Bmeters RFM-AMB Thermometer/Hygrometer (rfmamb)
Elvaco CMa12w Thermometer (cma12w)
Lansen Thermometer/Hygrometer (lansenth)

Supported smoke detectors:
Lansen Smoke Detector (lansensm)

Supported door/window detectors:
Lansen Door/Window Detector (lansendw)

Supported pulse counter:
Lansen Pulse Counter (lansenpu)

Supported electricity meters:
Easy Meter ESYS-WM20 (esyswm)
eBZ wMB-E01 (ebzwmbe)
EMH Metering (ehzp)
Tauron Amiplus (amiplus) (includes vendor apator and echelon)
Gavazzi EM24 (em24)
Kamstrup Omnipower (omnipower)

The wmbus dongles imst871a can listen to one type of wmbus telegrams at a time, ie either C1 or T1 telegrams. Thus you can listen to multiple meters as long as they all require the same radio mode C1 or T1.

However if you use amb8465 or rtlwmbus, then you can listen to both C1 and T1 telegrams at the same time.

Usage examples

wmbusmeters auto:c1

Listens for C1 telegrams using any of your available wmbus dongles:

Received telegram from: 12345678
          manufacturer: (KAM) Kamstrup Energi (0x2c2d)
           device type: Cold water meter (0x16)
            device ver: 0x1b
                device: im871a[12345678]
                  rssi: -77 dBm
                driver: multical21

Now listen to this specific meter.

wmbusmeters auto:c1 MyTapWater multical21:c1 12345678 00112233445566778899AABBCCDDEEFF

(The Multical21 and other meters use compressed telegrams, which means that you might have to wait up to 8 telegrams (8*16 seconds) until you receive a full length telegram which gives all the information needed to decode the compressed telegrams.)

Example output:

MyTapWater 12345678 6.388 m3 6.377 m3 0.000 m3/h 8°C 23°C DRY(dry 22-31 days) 2018-03-05 12:02.50

(Here the multical21 itself, is configured to send target volume, therefore the max flow is 0.000 m3/h.)

Example format json output:

wmbusmeters --format=json /dev/ttyUSB0:im871a MyTapWater multical21:c1 12345678 00112233445566778899AABBCCDDEEFF MyHeater multical302 22222222 00112233445566778899AABBCCDDEEFF

{"media":"cold water","meter":"multical21","name":"MyTapWater","id":"12345678","total_m3":6.388,"target_m3":6.377,"max_flow_m3h":0.000,"flow_temperature":8,"external_temperature":23,"current_status":"DRY","time_dry":"22-31 days","time_reversed":"","time_leaking":"","time_bursting":"","timestamp":"2018-02-08T09:07:22Z","device":"im871a[1234567]","rssi_dbm":-40}

{"media":"heat","meter":"multical302","name":"MyHeater","id":"22222222","total_kwh":0.000,"total_volume_m3":0.000,"current_kw":"0.000","timestamp":"2018-02-08T09:07:22Z"}

Example format fields output and use rtlsdr dongle with rtlwmbus tuned to 868.9MHz instead of the default 868.95MHz.

wmbusmeters --format=fields rtlwmbus:868.9M GreenhouseWater multical21:c1 33333333 NOKEY

GreenhouseTapWater;33333333;9999.099;77.712;0.000;11;31;;2018-03-05 12:10.24

You can select a subset of all available fields:

wmbusmeters --format=fields --selectfields=id,total_m3 /dev/ttyUSB0:im871a GreenhouseWater multical21:c1 33333333 NOKEY

33333333;9999.099

You can list all available fields for a meter: wmbusmeters --listfields=multical21

You can list all meters: wmbusmeters --listmeters

You can search for meters: wmbusmeters --listmeters=water or wmbusmteres --listmeters=q

Eaxmple of using the shell command to publish to MQTT:

wmbusmeters --shell='HOME=/home/you mosquitto_pub -h localhost -t water -m "$METER_JSON"' /dev/ttyUSB0:im871a GreenhouseWater multical21:c1 33333333 NOKEY

Eaxmple of using the shell command to inject data into postgresql database:

wmbusmeters --shell="psql waterreadings -c \"insert into readings values ('\$METER_ID',\$METER_TOTAL_M3,'\$METER_TIMESTAMP') \" " /dev/ttyUSB0:amb8465 MyColdWater multical21:c1 12345678 NOKEY (It is much easier to add shell commands in the conf file since you do not need to quote the quotes.)

You can have multiple shell commands and they will be executed in the order you gave them on the commandline.

To list the shell env variables available for a meter, run wmbusmeters --listenvs=multical21 which outputs:

METER_JSON
METER_TYPE
METER_NAME
METER_ID
METER_TOTAL_M3
METER_TARGET_M3
METER_MAX_FLOW_M3H
METER_FLOW_TEMPERATURE_C
METER_EXTERNAL_TEMPERATURE_C
METER_CURRENT_STATUS
METER_TIME_DRY
METER_TIME_REVERSED
METER_TIME_LEAKING
METER_TIME_BURSTING
METER_TIMESTAMP

(If you have supplied --json_floor=5 then you will also see METER_floor in the list)

Note that the METER_TIMESTAMP and the timestamp in the json output, is in UTC format, this is not your localtime. However the hr and fields output will print your localtime.

You can add shell=commandline to a meter file stored in wmbusmeters.d, then this meter will use this shell command instead of the command stored in wmbusmeters.conf.

You can use --debug to get both verbose output and the actual data bytes sent back and forth with the wmbus usb dongle.

If the meter does not use encryption of its meter data, then enter NOKEY on the command line.

wmbusmeters --format=json --meterfiles /dev/ttyUSB0:im871a:c1 MyTapWater multical21:c1 12345678 NOKEY

If you have a Kamstrup meters and you have received a KEM file and its password from your supplier, then you can use utils/kem-import.py utility to extract meter information from that file (including the AES key) and to create corresponding meter files in wmbusmetrs' config directory.

You can run wmbusmeters with --logtelegrams to get log output that can be placed in a simulation.txt file. You can then run wmbusmeter and instead of an usb device, you provide the simulationt.xt file as argument. See test.sh for more info.

If you do not specify any meters on the command line, then wmbusmeters will listen and print the header information of any telegram it hears.

Builds and runs on GNU/Linux MacOSX (with recent XCode), and FreeBSD

(For MacOSX do brew install librtlsdr libusb which takes such a long time that the MacOSX travis build is disabled for the moment.)

./configure && make && make test

Binary generated: ./build/wmbusmeters

make install will install this binary.

make HOST=arm to cross compile from GNU/Linux to Raspberry PI.

Binary generated: ./build_arm/wmbusmeters

make DEBUG=true

Binary generated: ./build_debug/wmbusmeters

make testd to run all tests using the debug build.

Debug builds only work on FreeBSD if the compiler is LLVM. If your system default compiler is gcc, set CXX=clang++ to the build environment to force LLVM to be used.

make DEBUG=true HOST=arm

Binary generated: ./build_arm_debug/wmbusmeters

System configuration

make install installs the files:

/etc/wmbusmeters.conf /usr/bin/wmbusmeters /usr/sbin/wmbusmetersd /etc/systemd/system/wmbusmeters.service /etc/logrotate.d/wmbusmeters

creates these directories: /etc/wmbusmeters.d /var/log/wmbusmeters/meter_readings

and adds the user wmbusmeters with no login account.

Common problems

If the daemon has started then the wmbus device will be taken and you cannot start wmbusmeters manually.

To run manually, first make sure the daemon is stopped sudo stop wmbusmeters@-dev-im871a_0.server if this hangs, then do sudo killall -9 wmbusmetersd and/or sudo killall -9 wmbusmeters.

If you are using rtl_sdr/rtl_wmbus and you want to stop the daemon, do sudo stop wmbusmeters@-dev-rtlsdr_3.server followed by sudo killall -9 rtl_sdr.

How to receive telegrams over longer distances.

I only have personal experience of the im871a,amb8465 and an rtlsdr compatible dongle. The commercial dongles (im871a,amb8464) receive well despite having tiny antennas inside the dongle. However the reception range is limited by walls and you must definitely get quite close to the meter if it is mounted underground in a concrete tube.

The rtlsdr/rtl-wmbus solution seems to work for a lot of users, but it does use more cpu-power since it decodes the radio traffic in software. Range seems to be similar to the other dongles, despite the antenna being much larger.

At least one professional collector use the same commercial dongles, but the versions with an external antenna connector, into which they attach a radio amplifier for the proper frequency, and then a larger antennna. This makes it possible to receive telegrams from meters underground and over larger distances.

Non-standard baud rate set for AMB8465 USB stick

Wmbusmeters expects the serial baud rate for the AMB8465 USB stick to be 9600 8n1. If you have used another tool and changed the baud rate to something else you need to restore the baud rate to 9600 8n1. You can do that with that other tool, or you can try wmbusmeters-admin and select Reset wmbus receives this command try all potential baud rates and send the factory reset command. Then you have to unplug and reinsert the dongle.

If you like to send the bytes manually, the correct bytes are:

• Factory reset of the settings: 0xFF1100EE
• Reset the stick to apply the factory defaults: 0xFF0500FA this is not necessary if you unplug and reinsert the dongle.

Docker

Experimental docker containers are available here: https://hub.docker.com/r/weetmuts/wmbusmeters

Source code

The source code is modular and it should be relatively straightforward to add more receivers and meters.

Read for example the text file: HowToAddaNewMeter.txt

Caveat

If you do not get proper readings from the meters with non-standard protocols. apator162, mkradio3, vario451 then you have to open an issue here and help out by logging a lot of messages and reverse engineer them even more..... :-/

Good free documents on the wireless mbus protocol standard EN 13757:

https://oms-group.org/

There is also a lot of wmbus protocol implementation details that are missing. They will be added to the program as we figure out how the meters send their data.