For users, the smart IC meter is very convenient to use. Users only need to insert the IC card after recharging into the water meter to use water smoothly. When the amount reaches a certain limit, the smart IC card prepaid water meter will automatically alarm and remind users to recharge. For water plants and other enterprises, the smart IC card prepaid water meter avoids the pain of water collection, greatly reduces the work intensity and improves the work efficiency. According to this advantage, the IC card prepaid water meter has been well promoted in a certain range. 

However, with the increase of the number of users and the increase of the usage time, some disadvantages of the IC card table are also shown. There are three major problems to be solved:

 

1. Battery power supply

Compared with other intelligent remote water meters, the biggest advantage of IC card meters is that they can work without wiring and rely on internal batteries. However, in the case of valve control, this feature is greatly limited. The main reason is that most of the electronic control valves used in the water meter network are electric valves. The characteristic of the valve is that the starting current is large, and it has a certain proportion with the pressure of the pipe network, so when operating the valve, the test of the transient characteristics of the battery is very bad. If the battery can't bear it, the valve will stop working, resulting in action failure. If the battery voltage drops suddenly, the whole working system will collapse or even crash. The risk increases with the increase of battery life. At present, super capacitor is also used to solve the problem of instantaneous power supply, but it can only reduce the impact on the battery, which cannot be completely avoided. 

On the other hand, due to the water quality of the pipe network, the electric valve needs to be inspected regularly to prevent failure due to rust. However, the regular inspection on a global scale must not avoid interference with the normal water use of users, resulting in disturbing results;

In addition, the use of lithium battery as power supply is the general choice of IC card meter manufacturers. However, under the circumstances that the state vigorously advocates green environmental protection, energy conservation and emission reduction, the large use of lithium battery in civil water meters does not conform to the spirit of the state.

                          

2. Recharge

Using IC card meter, most of the user enterprises aim to collect the water fee in advance. To this point, the enterprise needs to distribute multiple recharge points, purchase additional recharge and card reading equipment, which is a big investment for the user itself, and is not economical compared with the intelligent remote meter reading system. In addition, the IC card itself is a failure point. From the traditional contact IC card, users can use the waste card to insert and insert the card reader port maliciously, resulting in the failure of the card reader, which forces the water supply enterprises to maintain and increases the maintenance cost. More importantly, water stealing requires water supply enterprises to compensate for the loss caused by the failure of water meters. The new generation of contactless IC card table using RFID technology will have the same problem, and contactless IC card is easier to copy and crack passwords for a large number of copies, the consequences are incalculable.

              

3. Sensor measurement

At present, most IC card meters use magnetic induction elements such as reed pipe in sensing application water volume. There are great defects in the use of such devices in water meters. The main reason is that the pressure in the pipe network where the water meter is installed often changes, which will lead to the phenomenon of "water hammer" in the pipe network. The consequence of this phenomenon is that the water meter vibrates with the vibration of the pipe network, resulting in the phenomenon of "water hammer" Reed misoperation. On the other hand, if other sensors are used for water consumption induction, it is easy to be interfered by strong magnetic field, even a magnet will lead to induction failure. Because of the power consumption control, the use of other large power consumption sensing devices can not meet the design needs, so IC card meter can only use this relatively power saving sensing technology. 

At present, except for a few areas, most of the domestic areas that use smart water meters adopt the same scheme of smart remote water meters. Many water supply enterprises that originally used smart IC card water meters are also in the long-term use process. Because of these reasons, they have abandoned the use of IC card meters and turned their eyes to smart remote water meters. In the long run, smart IC card meter can be used in some special occasions, such as villa area, because the distance between water meters is far, it is not economical to collect data by remote transmission, so we can consider using IC card meter. In most cases, smart remote water meter is the first choice.