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bemasher
rtlamr
Go2015–2025
bemasher / rtlamr

rtlamr

An rtl-sdr receiver for Itron ERT compatible smart meters operating in the 900MHz ISM band.

Hardware & Embedded
Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
21Distinct people
23Mentions
1Explicit recommenders
2.6KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

An rtl-sdr receiver for Itron ERT compatible smart meters operating in the 900MHz ISM band.

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

I'm late to the discussion, but I've been monitoring via RTL-SDR and rtlamr for over a year, so I figure I should weigh in. In general it was super easy to do. - First, check…

collinmanderson used a recommendation phrase. One indexed comment matches. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 9:28:18 AM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year23 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2015-12-03 09:57:04 UTC to 2025-09-17 04:17:56 UTC.

0123452015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments20152016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 0 submissions, 5 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments20202021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2025

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20152015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC505
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC404
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202

What Hacker News says

1 sources
collinmanderson·Jan 2, 2018Recommendation phrase
I'm late to the discussion, but I've been monitoring via RTL-SDR and rtlamr for over a year, so I figure I should weigh in. In general it was super easy to do. - First, check to be sure your meter is compatible. (My gas and electric are both Itron) https://github.com/bemasher/rtlamr/blob/master/meters.csv I recommend taking a photo of your meter. (helpful for reference and comparing numbers) - Next buy the antenna and dongle. Probably obvious, but I tried buying one with out the antenna and it wasn't good enough, so I had to modify an old wifi router antenna to make it work. I just searched amazon for rtl-sdr. - Once it arrives, plug it in and install the rtlsdr software/driver. I think this may have involved installing a kernel module, but I didn't run into any trouble on linux. (I used pre-compiled binaries for my old 64-bit laptop runn
Read the rest
ing Ubuntu 16.04) You can test things by picking up fm radio via rtl_fm. - Next, install golang, and "go get rtlamr". - To monitor, you first start rtl_tcp and let it run in the background, and then run rtlamr which connects (via tcp) to rtl_tcp to tune the device and get raw output. - The dongle can get pretty warm/hot. - My meter has the meter number printed right underneath a big barcode. The first two digits are 12 or 05 for the meter type. I found this to be a pretty easy way to find the meter. - My meter broadcasts two extra decimal places, so if the meter display says 123456 kwh, it actually broadcasts 12345678 (I appreciate the extra precision). When processing things, I just add a 0 on the end to make it watt-hours. (This is true for gas too.) - I get a reading from my power meter every few seconds. About once a minute for gas. - I log all of my meter readings and append to a giant ~700mb CSV file. - I have a once-a-minute cron job that computes per-minute usage for the last 48 hours. (I save that to a static file and then graph using nginx + javascript. I started out by graphing using excel/numbers) - I also have a daily cron job that computers per-day usage going back to October 2016. I keep rtlamr and rtl_tcp running using systemd. The rtlamr command I use is: /home/collin/bin/rtlamr -filterid=543xxxxx,490xxxxx -format=csv -quiet >> /home/collin/data.csv
In Monitoring Home Power Consumption for less than $25

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