Reading the Ampy 5193A electricity meter using the inductive data serial port

I have the Ampy 5193A meter with “optional inductive data serial port”.

I will be having a careful look for the word ‘REPORTER’ just below the right screw, though I have a feeling I read this thread and did just that a couple of years ago.

I can’t remember the outcome, but lack of progress on my part may mean the outcome was doubtful. I can’t be sure though. Mostly I think lack of my progress then was due to not being able to find enough information on a working build, hence the summary of everything I have found in the points above, given below which I think suggests a build is possible.

Hopefully this summary will be of benefit to others coming after me.

Please suggest error correction with comments below.

Here is my list of things to do

1. Check if your meter has the “REPORTER” stamp on it just below the right screw
2. Use this arduino sketch

• Attach circuit 5 volt line to the 5 volt pin on the arduino.
• Attach circuit Ground to the ground pin on the arduino.
• Attach circuit Data Output to pin 3 on the ardunio.
• 3. Use this circuit sketch for the build.

• I have annotated the attached image which has clear OpAmp LM358N pin numbers marked on it.
• Parts list. The parts list applies to both circuits shown below.

OpAmp = LM358N

D1 = 1N4148 (diode)

R1 = 100k
R2 = 47k
R3 = 100k
R4 = 15k
R5 = 15k

(C1 = there is no C1 capacitor )
C2 = 3nF 
C3 = 1uF (polarised)
C4 = 5nF 
C5 = 100nF

L1 = 10,000 u henries (uh) or 10 milli henries (mh)

• Here is the original
  
• But then there is also this from “MartinR” in the original post which is shown below. I have annotated the PCB drawing below, using the original photo. I’ve forgotten all my electronics, but will have to figure out why MartinR has two extra resistors on the top left and the above drawing does not.

Note that as this thread in this post points out the connections to pins 2 & 3 can be swapped. This is why the above diagram shows them swapped compared to the below diagram.

Note also the two extra resistors, in the top right of “MartinR”s PCB design; one between the data line and ground (10k), and the other between the data output on the OpAmp, pin 1 and the data output port pin (4k7). Anyone any ideas why Alan didn’t have these and MartinR did, and are they necessary?

4. A previous older post reports that detection is sensitive to detector positioning
   https://openenergymonitor.org/forum-archive/node/2461.html
5. Here are

• photos of my meter taken this morning (1/8/2021) clearly showing the word “Reporter”. I saw no dot or spot on the side indicating where the inductive serial port may be. Of course it may not have one. What it does have, on the front, as we see from the photos, is a optical Tx / Rx port on the front and a blinking red led (top right). The led blinks 1,000 times per kWh used and I built a circuit with an LED counter onboard to count these, but it failed becasue of the transparent perspex meter cover which caused too much light leakage from the sides, otherwise that would have been enough. I have a sneeking feeling that “reporter” for this meter may mean capiable of reporting using the Tx / Rx optical meter. We will see … The lack of a dot somewhere on the side makes me wander..
• A link to the meter manual

4. I’m going to sketch this out on kiCAD. I’ve used it a long time ago ad as with these things the exausting hurdle is always in getting it installed and operable. Installing it is easy. But getting the libraries for the parts not so easy, until you have made all the configuration mistakes I have just made. If you are on Arch Linux like I am then here are the packages you should install

• sudo pacman -S kicad kicad-library kicad-library-3d The last package is a fair size, so it may take a while to download. Without the kicad-library package you have no parts, so it is essential. How you do this on a pc who knows.
• The kicad web pages for the libraries are here and here but it is much easiear to simply load up the default packages from the Arch repository as above.
• If you mess up your initial set-up, as I did, you clear out the initial kicad config files with this one liner cd $HOME/.config/kicad/; ls -la; #rm fp*; #rm sym*; ls -la. Remove the #‘s to get it to delete these config files.
• Once you have kicad loaded and start creating a layout simply accept the default values for the already installed libraries.
• I will post the design files after they are done, though I will proof it on vero board first (still no idea if the meter has an induction serial port, but I will find out)

time for a cup of tea

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Resistors at the top right of the board:

brown
black
orange
gold
= 10k

yellow
purple
red
gold
= 4k