wmbusmeters-wiki
Best setup for receiving wmbus over long distances
After some personal and very rudimentary testing, I have found that the best setup for my location is by using an rtlsdr.com dongle (can be purchased here: rtl-sdr.com) and a tuned dipole antenna (can be purchased here: http://qlrs.pl/antena-lrs-868mhz-dipol-elastyczna-23mm) and using the latest version of rtl_wmbus (which can decode S1,T1 and C1 at the same time.)
With this setup I can finally place the antenna inside my house (a wooden house, thin walls) and receive measurements from the multical21 c1 water meter 1.5 meter down in the ground, inside a concrete cylinder a good 35 meters away from the house.
The im871a dongle is the second best solution, it can receive 30m away from the meter, but must be outside of the house. Pretty good considering that the antenna inside the dongle is tiny compared to the dipole antenna above. The amb8465 dongle can receive from 15m away and the nano-cul does seem to have problems receiving C1 telegrams since it can only receive telegrams when sitting on top of the concrete cylinder.
I am interested in the reception capabilities of a hardware chip like im871a and a tuned dipole antenna (instead of the tiny antenna inside the dongle) and I have such a setup available and will update this page when I have made some more testing.
