What's inside a smart meter? iFixit tears it down

摘要

You can usually find the folks at iFixit tearing down electronics with an eye toward expanding your knowledge of how to repair your electronic devices and keep them out of landfills (see "iFixit's Kyle Wiens: extending electronics' life span," EDN, Jan 21, 2010, http:// bit.lyqwcOK). When iFixit's Chief Executive Officer Kyle Wiens had the opportunity to tear down an Elster (www.elster.com) smart meter, however, he jumped at it—not to produce a repair manual but to evaluate the health and safety issues that surround the utilities' installation of smart meters., The technicians at iFixit got their hands on an Elster Rex2 Watthour meter with features that an old-fashioned motor-driven meter lacks: nonvolatile memory with 1 million write cycles, advanced security with full 128-bit AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) encryption, the ability to make remote upgrades, and support for 900-MHz and 2.4-GHz ZigBee communication.