Smart Meters Platform

Problem

Utility meters in facilities management are frequently mechanical, and mechanical meters are read by a person walking to them. That constraint is not going away, and most metering software ignores it — it is designed for meters that report themselves.

The result is a gap. Readings are collected on paper or in a spreadsheet, and everything downstream inherits their weaknesses: transcription errors that look like real consumption changes, missed reads filled in later, no evidence behind a disputed number, meters that have rolled over unnoticed, and no structural relationship between a main meter and the sub meters beneath it.

Consumption analysis, water balance and conservation targets all rest on that data. When it cannot be trusted, none of them can be defended.

Product vision

A platform that treats manual reading as the normal case rather than a limitation, and makes each reading verifiable at the moment it is taken.

The engineering intent is narrow and deliberate: get trustworthy readings into a structured meter hierarchy, and the analysis becomes possible. The platform is not trying to be a building management system.

Users

FM technicians record readings during rounds, with the meter photograph captured as part of the entry rather than as an afterthought.

Facilities engineers review consumption, compare sub meters against their main, and investigate discrepancies.

Administrators manage sites, the meter hierarchy, users and permissions.

System architecture

Flutter applications for field and desktop use, with Supabase providing the backend, authentication and role-based access. Readings and their photographic evidence are stored together, so a reading can always be traced back to what the meter actually showed.

The meter model supports water, electricity, BTU and cooling, and fuel or diesel meters; main and sub meters; and physical and virtual meters, so that a calculated quantity can sit in the hierarchy alongside a measured one and be labelled as such.

Capabilities

• Authentication and role-based access

• Site and meter structure

  Water, electricity, BTU and cooling, and fuel meters; main and sub; physical and virtual.

• Meter reading entry

• Photographic reading evidence

• Consumption dashboard

• Administration and user management

• Reporting and export

• Reading validation and data-quality rules

  Checking an entry against the previous reading and a plausible consumption range at the point of entry.

• Baselines and consumption targets

• Water and energy balance

  Comparing main against sub meters and reporting the unaccounted fraction explicitly.

• Conservation opportunity identification

• Savings measurement and verification

Engineering value

The platform exists because of the metering work described in Facilities metering and conservation engineering. The requirements are not hypothetical — each one traces to a specific way manual metering fails in practice.

That is the argument for an engineer building it. The failure modes it addresses are the ones you only see by taking the readings yourself.

Current status

In development. Authentication, meter structure, reading entry and photographic evidence are working. Dashboard, administration and reporting are being built. Validation, baselines, balance and savings verification are planned or conceptual, and are described as such.

Not publicly available, and no public deployment or repository is offered.