Thanks for joining me!
This is just a blog or posting location for my occasional musings, thoughts and general rants..
They are a mix of personal opinion, thoughts and miscellany.
Disclaimer: Anything on this site does not represent the views or thoughts of any other business or person – just me.
“Engineers are continually faced by great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.”
—Lee Iacocca, American engineer and automobile executive
An Engineer‘s View 
Cheers for taking the time to reply, sorry about my engineer comment I think you knew what I meant 🙂
I will have a go, I was looking for a premade slim jim, I think this would work.
https://www.co-star.co.uk/_uploads/pdfs/odp420(1).pdf
Also I have been trying to find out the best postion to point it in to get the best WAN, I googled transmitter locations but only found one in York, I am in Leeds. Surely that isnt right 🙂
My HAN is terrible only way I can get it working consistantly is with pretty much line of sight, which involves putting the smart meter on a neighbours wall haha
LikeLiked by 2 people
Try just extending the cable with the antenna board (without a box) and see if it works – if it does – tidy it up with an antenna box. Try and get it on an outside wall – but line of sight from where you want your HAN – and that may work better too.
I suspect your transmitter for Leeds is at Elmley Moor. (HD8 9TQ)
LikeLike
Great write up. I’m definitely interested as I’m fighting a very poor signal!
Is there any particular reason you went with making a slim jim rather than just buy a suitable 423mhz antennae like these:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/226249912334?
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/204886971017?
Or is the small frequency variance (these are 433…) that important?
LikeLike
Missed this question – but they do work too.
I only made a “slim jim” to test it in the workshop – and it’s very cheap!
LikeLike
After 6 months of battling with my energy provider about the SMETS2 smart meter I decided to follow your guide to extend the antenna out of my cellar to the outside in the hope of getting a better connection.
Getting into the plastic box, is as you said, very, very difficult.
I’ve got a couple of questions which I would really appreciate your feedback on. The first is regarding the antenna section. I notice that if I take a continuity reading on my multimeter between the solder joint of the red-write and the solder joint for the internal core of the pigtail wire it is reported as short. Is this normal? When I remove all the wires from the PCB, the PCB connections still reports as short (0 on multimeter continuity test). I’m not familiar with these electronics so I was not sure if this was normal.
Whereas at the other pigtail which is connecting the to main PCB, the live and ground wires are not shorted.
Secondly, once you refitted the communications hub did you have to make any other changes / requests to your energy supplier to get the device to reconnect? My SMETs has not given an automatic reading for weeks. Usually I have to contact my energy supplier for them to perform some remote reset and request the data. At the moment the WAN and HAN LEDs are blinking simultaneously every few seconds as they should. I have no idea whether the antenna being outside is making a difference.
Fingers crossed. And, thanks for your great guide. Ridiculous that the energy companies cannot provide a solution.
LikeLike
John,
I don’t support individual requests for help (too many and far too time consuming) but I can offer a bit more information that might help.
Briefly – yes, the output stage of the main circuit board- eg centre to ground might report a short – especially with something as crude as a multimeter.
The normal 420MHz signal input is VERY low level and is made probably via a small UHF signal isolation transformer/ or isolating RF stage.
It’s a few years since this was done so I forget the exact design used.
So, yes it’s normal to see what appears to be a short when DC from a multimeter is applied.
As long as you only de-solder the wires that connect the planar (circuit board) antenna off the board and then just install an SMB extension socket (as I showed) in its place – to extend that planar antenna and NOTHING else – it should all work.
There should be no connection between the core and shield of any pigtail that is out of circuit.
I think the planar antenna only has one connection to the main copper area – the core of cable. The shield is just anchored but not connected – from memory.
You must bear in mind you are dealing with a very low level RF signal from the antenna – so do use the right type of wire, and the right type of connectors as shown (since these affect the ability for this very low level signal to arrive at the electronics with enough power to trigger a response – and then our weak data signal needs to establish a communication connection – and that is not at a high level either….
Please ensure your connectors going out of the case are good quality (making sure you use a location in the box that won’t be affected by the mechanics of putting the plastic shells back together again) and then extend the antenna cable to where you need the new planar antenna box (or another dipole antenna for 400-450MHz) to go.
Then once done – attach it all back up and wait…
It can take anything from 2 hours to a month for communication to start….
You should not have to do anything (because the electricity company have according to their data – already activated a smart meter at your address – even if it had failed to connect).
They usually don’t deactivate that – they just don’t get any readings – and so tell you that you can’t have 30 minute billing (smart) tariffs.
You need to wait a few days at least – I suggest 14 days to be safe, and then ask your company if you can change tariff – and particularly if they can check if they are getting data from Arqiva.
For obvious reasons I would NOT elaborate on why your dumb meter has suddenly found a voice….
The fact you have both WAN and HAN lights is probably a good thing !
Good luck.
LikeLike