Setup & commissioning

Once a Node is mounted and powered (see Installation), commissioning is a five-minute job from a phone or laptop: connect to the Node, tell it which meter is yours, and it does the rest. For privacy, a Node in normal operation displays and reports only the one meter you select, even though it can hear several nearby.

Have your latest water bill handy. Specifically, you want the meter reading printed on it (the odometer-style total), not just the gallons used that period. That number is how you pick your meter out of the neighbors'.

Step by step

1. Connect to the Node. Each Node runs its own WiFi access point named WaterMeter<NN> (NN is the node number). Join it and browse to http://192.168.4.1. If the Node is already on your WiFi, just browse to the address it was given instead.
2. Open Setup and log in. From the dashboard, click Setup. Enter the setup password supplied with your unit. (The page stays unlocked until the Node reboots.)
3. Pick your meter's protocol. In the Protocol dropdown choose your meter family: 2006B, 2014WOSE, or 2020OCECNA. If you don't know which, pick one, click Save & Reboot, and see whether meters appear in the next step; if not, try the next protocol. The Node decodes one protocol at a time.
4. Identify your meter. The Default Meter dropdown lists every meter the Node currently hears on the selected protocol, each shown as ID, gallons, signal, age, strongest signal first (your own meter is usually the strongest). Two ways to find yours:
   • Match your bill. Find the entry whose gallons are closest to (and a little above) the meter reading on your latest bill. It reads higher because water has been used since the bill was issued. If your bill is in CCF, multiply by 748 to get gallons (1 CCF = 748 gal).
   • Watch it count (most reliable). Run an outdoor tap or your irrigation for a minute and refresh: the entry whose gallons climb is yours.
5. Set it as the default. Select your meter and click Set. That meter is now the one the Node tracks, displays, emails, and (if part of a mesh) reports to the gateway.
6. Optional: WiFi and email. While you're in Setup you can join the Node to your WiFi network (so it's reachable without its access point) and turn on daily, weekly, or monthly email reports with one or more recipients.
7. Verify. Return to the dashboard. It should now show your one meter with a live volume. That's commissioning done.

Privacy & debug mode

By default a Node is in normal mode: its public dashboard and its email show only your selected meter, so a neighbor (or anyone on the network) can't read other meters through it. The full list of nearby meters is visible only inside the password-protected Setup page, which you need anyway to choose your meter.

Installers occasionally need more. The Setup page has a Debug checkbox that, once the password is re-entered, reveals every meter the Node hears (on the dashboard too) plus radio diagnostics like fixed-frequency tuning. Debug is deliberately temporary: it is off after every reboot and turning it off again needs no password.

Where this fits

This page covers software commissioning. For the physical install (power, mounting, enclosure) see Installation; for what the Node mails out once running, see the Email sample. If the Node feeds a central database through a Gateway, the PC-side software is on the Downloads page.