i have a current clamp and 2 pulse meters i got an electrician to install, 1 for solar generation and 1 for house usage. the one for solar generation is
http://www.schnap.com.au/kilowatt-hour-meter/single-phase-electric-kilow...
and the one for house usage is
http://www.schnap.com.au/kilowatt-hour-meter/single-phase-electric-kilow...
so i can collect data for the solar impulse meter and the current clamp, but im getting nothing off the house usage impulse meter.
the meters were recommended by other people using them with the v2 flusko. i have the v2b flusko.
so there dilemma is this..
1, there is no rating for the V needed for the impulse for the solar meter but it works so i dont know if its a 5v - 27v rated meter, but all the other meters they make are that rating.
2, the house meter has a volt requirement of 5v to 27v for impulse and the flusko uses 3.3 v that i measured with a multimeter.
3, the electrician broke the terminals off the household meter and in turn soldered them onto the circuit board in the meter instead of the standard screw terminal. (i dont know if he damaged anything else in the meter in the process)
is there a way to test the electrical meter to see if the S0 impulse circuit is still working when the red light blips on and off.
where do i go from here?
The S0-impulse port is basically a switch that is closed for the time of the pulse (see "open collector (OC)" in wikipedia on how it actually works) - to test it you may simply supply an Ohmmeter (resistance checker) to the terminals (be sure to not connect to the line terminals - you don't want to measure the inner resistance of the power plant); if the LED (the "red light") flashes, thus a pulse is triggered, then the resistance should drop from "infinite" to some value (most likely not zero as a transistor is no ideal switch) - at least you should recognize "something" (the pulse should be around 30 to 90 milliseconds long).
The 5 to 27V just say what the OC may get as a load for not being sent to heaven...
By the way: make sure to connect the pulsers correctly, that is with the right polarity (+/-) and to the "pulse capable" ports of the FLM, that is port 2 to 5; make sure that, if using port 2 or 3 for pulse input, this must be configured as such in the FLM's configuration.
i tried the multimeter with ohm to check the resistance with the S0 and it just read open circuit for both the working and the non working meter, i tried it while connected and while not connected.
then i used it set to voltage and measured across the flusko terminals while connected, the working meter is saying 3.29 volts, then drops briefly to 2.7 volts and so on over and over. the non working meter when connected and measuring at the flusko terminals is continuously on 3.29 volts it doesn't change at all when i figure it must be meant to change more the the working meter since im using more electricy then im generating atm, does that mean the sparky killed my meter?
i got the sparky back to check the meter and he said it looks fine.
in the back of the book for the meter it says in the troubleshooting section for no pulse received. to check that the voltage is between 5 and 27volts.
=\ what to do?
Without a specification of the meter there is no judging possible (searching with LANX LXEM180 just refers to Schnap page that not really helpful); the 3.3V come from the FLM and are sent to ground potential by the S0 during the pulse; this is detected as "falling edge" by the FLM - this should be invariant to the voltage passed in; what was the rationale of the sparky claiming the meter to work, that the LED flashes? Sorry cannot help without considerable info to follow up...
this is the book that came with the meter
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/100157616/20140326_175247.jpg
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/100157616/20140326_175231.jpg
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/100157616/20140326_175222.jpg
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/100157616/20140326_175201.jpg
i hope this helps, i rang the providers and they said the will get their suppliers to give me more information but i doubt they will.
Chapter 10.5 tells the pulse output is OC, electrically isolated, so an optocoupler; there is nothing specific with it, so it "should" work as the solar meter... Again the question: Did you check polarity of the wire to the FLM? But as you wrote, you could not detect a voltage drop, I assume the optocoupler is bricked (why so ever) - if you have an additional LED, you may build a test loop that should act like the built-in LED: Supply +5V to a resistor (470 Ohm) to the anode of the LED; cathode of the LED to the (+) S0, (-) of the S0 to the ground of the 5V supply - if that does not work, well the sparky should replace the meter as he voided the warrenty by soldering the wires to it (never heard of such a habit?!).
"electrician broke the terminals off the household meter and in turn soldered them onto the circuit board" may indicate that the circuit path on the PCB of the meter is damaged, so has no electrical connection to the optocoupler anymore; this may be fixed by some tin-solder... Be aware that the meter is on hot wire - so fingers off as long as connected!
Thanks I was wondering how I would need go about building a test circuit. Ill do that tonmorow and test it. Thanks.
Looks like the meters broken. Thankd for your help ill have to get another one and try and gey the sparkyto pay for it