We were asked to supply 24 of our HCM40010 APM (Automatic Prepayment Meters) to a housing charity in Birmingham.
To be installed by the housing Charity we went to commission the meters at the end of the project.
To enable testing of the system on the last day of commissioning the input from the electric meters was set at 1000 times the normal value and, unfortunately, it wasn’t reset to the correct rate and the amount of credit on the meter was used at a very quick rate.
On the train home our engineer had a phone call outlining the predicament and needed to resolve the problem for the tenant who had no electricity.
He initially commissioned the meters by using his phone as a Wi-Fi hot spot enabling him to use his laptop to check the meters.
To resolve the problem he used the same procedure on the train, was able to log in to the meter, reset to the correct settings and put credit back on the meter.
However, as this is a secure system meter owners would need access to a VPN and know the 128bit AES key for that network but authorised people can amend the system where necessary.
The benefit of this is that tariffs can be set, meters read, all from a remote laptop.
