Replacing a smart meter comms hub

Qyburn

Documentation for my meter (Kaifa MA120) says it tries to join the HAN for four hours after firing up, then retries at 30 minute intervals indefinitely.  I guess as well as the Zigbee signal it can't join until its GUID is added into the comms hub.  Before our CH was replaced the engineer pointed out the "J" bottom right of the display indicating it was joined. After the new CH was fitted that J was replaced for a few minutes by something flashing until it joined again.

Qyburn

I filled in the "contact us" form to ask DCC directly about signal issues.
https://www.smartdcc.co.uk/contact-us-form-energy-consumers/

A couple of days I got a qualified reply ..

"Based on our coverage checker, we have checked that both North and 4G coverage are available for your address with high likelihood of connectivity. Coverage is an indication that connectivity is possible. Unfortunately, we cannot guarantee connectivity as there may be local factors such as: property construction, location of meters and sources of localised interference which can impact on the signal."

 

Reed_Richards

My meter is a Kaifa MA120B (so almost the same model).  But is wasn't "fired-up" when the comms hub was replaced (by mean of a power cycle) so perhaps it's not doing the right thing?  I haven't yet found documentation for this meter, so you did better than I, @Qyburn.

The bottom right of the display is an arrow.  At the moment there is a flashing S then an arrow pointing bottom left, I have not seen that before.  On an photo taken of my old comms hub a few hours after it was installed there is indeed a J and a down arrow.  A recent photo of the new comms hub just shows the arrow pointing bottom right and no letter.

     

QrizB

Reed_Richards said:

Is there such a device, a hand-held signal strength meter that I could tune to 420 MHz?  Perhaps some sort of Spectrum Analyser (with an aerial)? 

Not exactly handheld, but I think you could do it (at least in principle) with a laptop and a SDR (software defined radio) dongle with an external antenna.

My search is having a moment but you should be able to find basic details fairly easily?

Qyburn

Reed_Richards said:

My meter is a Kaifa MA120B (so almost the same model).  But is wasn't "fired-up" when the comms hub was replaced (by mean of a power cycle) so perhaps it's not doing the right thing?  I haven't yet found documentation for this meter, so you did better than I, @Qyburn.    

I was a bit sloppy with the "fired up" comment. The documentation just says for four hours without mentioning when that starts.  https://www.kaifametering-uk.com/

Our meter was installed as a replacement with a new comms hub on 1st April. Although the guy said it was all looking good it never actually worked at all. On 20th June they installed the flying lead and then replaced the comms hub, all without pulling the fuse so the meter was powered up throughout. Current display is "J" plus diagonal down arrow.  I don't recall exwct what it showed after the ols CH was removed but definitely something was flashing until it rejoined. 

Reed_Richards

@Qyburn, your status now is that your supplier can get a reading if they send a command to the DCC to supply a reading but the routine daily DCC readings are not working?  And no readings before the flying lead was installed?  How long is the flying lead?  Did your supplier recover old reading from before the fix on 20th June?  Sorry, you may have stated some of this previously but I want to be clear about how similar your case is to mine to see if it provides clues to a solution.  

Qyburn

Reed_Richards said:

@Qyburn, your status now is that your supplier can get a reading if they send a command to the DCC to supply a reading but the routine daily DCC readings are not working?  .  

The flying lead is around 50cm and the comms hub is now mounted almost at the bottom of the cabinet instead of on top of the meter. But after fitting the lead nothing worked and the comms hub had to be replaced.  So I think the jury's out on whether the flying lead was any sort of fix.

From then until 25th June everything worked fine and the supplier was able to retrieve all h/h import data from 2nd April. Import and export data was collected automatically.

Starting from 26th June the only thing that works is manual retrieve of a few days import data when I phone and ask. That never fails.  Automatic collection never works, neither does manual collection of export (I was told it returns E21 error) or manual request for meter reading ("snapshot")

tetrarch

Apologies for taking this slightly sideways but I have some recent experience with Octopus.

I have a meter in a poor reception area that was (somewhat) ameliorated by an additional aerial. I've just had a solar array added (in April) and when I tried to change to an outgoing tariff I was stymied by a non-reporting meter

After several weeks of pointless back-and-forwards with empty promises I was given a direct number for the metering team. Things really switched up into gear and I had a new comms hub within two days.

The engineer was outstanding and made sure that the signal was being successfully received before he left my house

Once re-established I was then fobbed off by useless CS until I raised a complaint, was assigned an individual, and was receiving payments within 10 days

Very mixed experience with Octopus, but ultimately successful

Regards

Tet 

Qyburn

tetrarch said:

After several weeks of pointless back-and-forwards with empty promises I was given a direct number for the metering team.

Was that Octopus Energy Services 020 3095 8286 / 0808 196 7511?

tetrarch said:

I raised a complaint, was assigned an individual, and was receiving payments within 10 days

My current complaint has been open since 15th July and have had nothing from the complaint handler. I can'tactually contact her directly all that happens, twelve times so far, is that some promises they'll get her togive me an update. By the way "current complaint" because they closed the previous one after paying what the Ombudsman had directed, saying they weren't required to do any more.

Reed_Richards

tetrarch said:

I have a meter in a poor reception area that was (somewhat) ameliorated by an additional aerial. 

So you must be in the south.  Unfortunately in the north an aerial is not an available option.  The nearest you can get to that is to have the comms hub on a flying lead and this seems to be a very short (0.5 m) flying lead.

tetrarch said:

After several weeks of pointless back-and-forwards with empty promises I was given a direct number for the metering team. Things really switched up into gear and I had a new comms hub within two days.

The engineer was outstanding and made sure that the signal was being successfully received before he left my house

I strongly suspect that problems like mine and @Qyburn's could be solved given the right expertise and effort, but both are frequently lacking.