Smart Meter QR Code Transfer for Reliable IoT Data Collection
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing electricity meters face challenges with unreliable wireless communication for data transmission and inefficiencies in capturing and processing consumption data from IoT devices.
Innovation Solution
An electricity meter that displays visible symbols, such as QR codes, and a reader that captures and processes these symbols to decode and transmit information, enabling local or remote decoding and further processing.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If wireless communication is used to transmit data from the meter to the reader, then data transmission can be performed remotely, but the communication reliability is insufficient and transmission time is prolonged
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces wireless electromagnetic communication with optical communication using visible light. The meter displays visual symbols (such as QR codes or other machine-readable patterns) that the reader captures using an optical sensor or camera. This substitution of the communication medium from radio waves to visible light provides more reliable transmission and faster capture times, as optical detection is highly accurate and can be performed in a fraction of a second.
2Quantity of substance
If large amounts of data from multiple IoT devices are transmitted wirelessly, then comprehensive consumption information can be collected, but the transmission process becomes excessively time-consuming
Solution Approach 1:
The patent encodes large volumes of data into a two-dimensional visual symbol structure (such as a QR code with multiple layers of encoding). Instead of transmitting data sequentially through wireless communication, the meter displays all the consumption data from multiple IoT devices simultaneously in a compact visual format. The reader captures the entire data set in a single optical snapshot, effectively adding a spatial dimension to data transmission and eliminating time delays associated with sequential wireless transmission.
3Measurement precision
If wireless communication protocols are used for data transmission, then remote reading is enabled, but the accuracy and reliability of data capture are compromised
Solution Approach 1:
The patent creates a visual copy (optical representation) of the consumption data that can be captured with high precision. The meter generates machine-readable visual symbols that encode the exact same information that would otherwise be transmitted wirelessly. The reader captures this visual copy using optical sensors, which provide high measurement precision and data accuracy. This copying approach maintains ease of operation through automated optical capture while significantly improving data capture accuracy compared to wireless communication methods.
Data Source
AI summary
A smart (e.g., electricity) meter receives information (e.g., power consumption data) for different periods of time from set of IOT devices (e.g., electrical appliances), generates symbols (e.g., QR codes) based on the received information, and displays those symbols sequentially and/or in parallel, where each symbol represents a particular set of information for a particular IOT device for a particular period of time. A handheld reader captures images of the displayed symbols and transmits the captured images to a remote server that decodes the imaged symbols to recover the information from the IOT devices for further processing. In this way, a large amount of IOT device information may be efficiently and effectively communicated from the meter to the server using the reader.