<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by rklootwijk</i>
<br />You meant IP port instead of IR port, right?
The reader (the CEM 05000 device in the picture) communicates with the energy meter through Infrared leds. This port is just for communicating with this device.
The reader is a device that asks data to the energy meter through the IR interface and then transmits this data remotely to the requestor by different ways, depending on the interface you have acquired. The reader gets then the exact amount of energy that has passed through the meter (including decimals of KWh)
In my case, the interface to access the reader is an ethernet port, through TCP/IP protocol, and in my case through direct http calls
If you do not want to use this way of accesing the energy meter, you can then use the led pulse output or the S0 pulse port with an attacched rfxcom pulse counter, but then you receive pulses and you have to calculate the amount of energy based on the received pulses, not the energy reads, so then you don't need the CEM 05000 device
The problem that I have found, is that in case of loosing the home automation server or the rfxcom counter by any reason, you loose the exact reads. Through the CEM05000, the reader ask the energy meter to transmit the energy quantity stored in its internal memory which is always accurate, no matter if you hav losen pulses because an outage in your home server.
Hope this helps you to understand my approach to this solution.
I agree that it looks more straightforward when compared with RFXmeter solution, but I guess that you will need 3 of these sets when using 3-phase 230V?