Patent ID: 8423302

Claim:
An electronic system and assembly adapted for instantly and continuously creating, updating and storing flowrate histograms and time-of-use histograms of water consumption in situ without the need for any external auxiliary computing system, at a water outlet from a water pipeline, and for providing a profile on how water has been used during a lapsed service life of a water meter, said system and assembly comprising: a Meter Interface Unit (UIM) connected to the water meter ( 1 ) for conditioning and filtering pulses produced by the water meter, each of said pulses corresponding to a predetermined unit volume of water passing through the water meter; a control unit ( 3 ) connected to the water meter for making measurements and calculations using the pulses and for generating histograms of water consumption, said control unit configure to: receive the pulses from said water meter, measure the length of time between each of the pulses and determine an instantaneous flow rate of a corresponding volume of water passing through the water meter, and increase by one unit a frequency counter associated with a corresponding pre-set flowrate range of a plurality of pre-set flow rate ranges, every time a pulse is received, and to create a lapsed service life flowrate histogram of the meter; and determine the time of day that each pulse is received and increase a volume frequency counter associated with a corresponding predetermined time of day range of a plurality of time of day ranges by one unit volume by adding to the number of pulses received in previous days in each predetermined time of day range, and create a lapsed service life time-of-use histogram of the meter; wherein the resulting flow rate histogram and time-of-use histogram are independent data series of values stored in a memory of said control unit, said control unit having previously been programmed with the limits of flow-rate and time-of-use intervals, said flow rate and time-of use intervals having each an associated register acting as a counter for storing the amount of pulses that occurred within each said interval.