On 08/11/2019 22:01, Theo wrote:
Max Demian wrote:
On 08/11/2019 16:59, larkim wrote:

I'd recently been having issues with the gas readings showing up on my
suppliers online account, but the electricity not reading at all, despite
the fact that I could see it on the IHD.

The customer service operator advised me to power off the router for my
home broadband, and switch off the IHD. For some reason believing a) that
wifi was involved and b) that the IHD was somehow responsible for sending
the data to the supplier. Unless I've missed something about data channel
pollution etc, that sounded like ******** to me.

There's no way anyone in their right mind would allow the energy company
access to their Wi-Fi code. They could look at your holiday snaps if
they weren't specifically secured. (You can usually share drives between
computers on the same Wi-Fi network and it would be hard to know you
hadn't by mistake.)

The IHD uses Zigbee to communicate with the meter. Zigbee is 2.4GHz, so it
is possible to be interfered with by wifi (or Bluetooth, microwave ovens,
etc).

Academic here since the mains meter is right in the core of the house
and there is no mobile signal to be had there for love nor money.

It sounds like it's a simple diagnostic tool to rule out a potential source
of 2.4GHz interference (not very effective, unless turning off all the
neighbours' routers too).

Indeed it may make more sense to leave all your usual kit on so that it
doesn't choose the newly vacated band where your normal Wifi channel is.

The worst offender for blocking mobile phone signals I have come across
was actually a handset charger for a BT phone. This seemed so unlikely a
cause of bad signal that it came as a complete surprise when the thing
was finally thrown out that mobile signal magically improved.

The IHD doesn't send data to the supplier, but it's possible they want the
IHD working so they can get you to read things off the display.

Theo

One problem I have encountered with pairing the Owl things with their
sender is that they can under some circumstances latch onto any nearby
Owl not necessarily the one you actually want for your own premises.

--
Regards,
Martin Brown