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Glossary
Plain-English meanings of the terms used in this wiki, in alphabetical order.
An extra program that Home Assistant OS installs and manages for you. Newer Home Assistant menus call these apps. They need the Home Assistant Supervisor. See Home Assistant: apps.
Binary phase-shift keying. A way to send bits by flipping a radio wave's phase: normal = one value, upside-down = the other. See Wikipedia and How it works.
Using readings from your meter’s dial to work out litres per pulse and the radio counter’s starting offset. Guided calibration in 0.3.0 can establish both, providing usage litres and an estimated absolute Meter reading; follow status if more readings are needed. See Calibration.
One tiny step of a spreading code. Each data bit here is spread into 4,095 chips.
An Australian radio licence that covers everyone using certain equipment, with no application or fee, provided they follow its rules. See ACMA: class licences.
A radio message that isn't encrypted, so ha-taggle can read its counters (the 18- and 21-byte formats).
An error-correcting code that adds redundant bits based on the current and previous few bits, so a receiver can fix some errors. See Wikipedia.
Cyclic redundancy check. A short checksum used to detect corrupted data. See Wikipedia.
Decibel. A logarithmic unit for ratios. +3 dB is roughly double, +10 dB is ten times.
Decibels relative to full scale. 0 dBFS is the loudest signal the receiver can represent. Negative numbers are quieter. See Wikipedia.
An antenna made of two equal arms pointing in opposite directions. Each arm is about a quarter wavelength long.
Direct sequence spread spectrum. Spreading each bit over a long pseudo-random code so a weak signal can be recovered from noise. See Wikipedia.
The Linux TV-tuner driver (dvb_usb_rtl28xxu) that can grab an RTL-SDR before ha-taggle can use it. See Installing with Docker.
A 24-byte Taggle message whose contents are scrambled. ha-taggle reads only the ID and signal strength, and never tries to decrypt it.
How much the radio amplifies the incoming signal. Too little and weak signals vanish. Too much and strong signals distort ("overload").
Home Assistant Community Store. A community tool for installing custom cards and integrations. See HACS.
Hash-based message authentication code. A one-way, keyed scramble. The same input and key always give the same output, but you can't reverse it without the key. See Wikipedia.
In-phase and quadrature samples: pairs of numbers that together describe a radio signal. rtl_sdr outputs them as unsigned 8-bit values (.cu8). See Wikipedia.
A standard timezone name like Australia/Brisbane. See the list on Wikipedia.
A privacy idea: never publish a figure that describes fewer than k people. ha-taggle uses k = 3 or more. See Wikipedia.
Kilolitre = 1,000 litres = 1 cubic metre (m³).
Low interference potential devices. The Australian class licence covering low-power transmitters like Taggle's. See ACMA.
Maximum-length sequence. A pseudo-random binary pattern made by a shift register. It repeats only after the longest possible run. See Wikipedia.
The middle value when numbers are sorted. Unlike the average, a single extreme value (like a leaking house) barely moves it. See Wikipedia.
ha-taggle's running total of recovered hourly pulse differences. Different from the wrapping radio counter and not the dial reading.
A way for programs to pass messages. Technically, a lightweight publish/subscribe protocol, widely used in home automation. See mqtt.org and Wikipedia.
The server that passes MQTT messages between programs, for example the Mosquitto add-on.
A Home Assistant feature where a program announces its sensors over MQTT and they appear automatically. See Home Assistant.
Narrowband Internet of Things. A mobile-phone-network technology. NB-IoT Taggle meters can't be received by ha-taggle.
Pseudo-noise code. A sequence that looks random but is predictable, used for spreading. See Wikipedia.
One "tick" from the water meter to the transmitter, representing a fixed amount of water. You find that amount by calibration.
An antenna element a quarter of the radio wavelength long, about 8 cm at 922 MHz. See Wikipedia: monopole antenna.
The dial reading (register reading) is the total volume on the physical water meter. The register is its display, not the transmitter ID or radio counter.
A USB software-defined radio based on the Realtek RTL2832U chip. See RTL-SDR Blog: about.
A random secret mixed into the HMAC so the scrambled labels are unique to your install.
A temporary mode that prints every ID heard, with signal strength, without saving data or using MQTT.
Software-defined radio. A radio where filtering and decoding are done in software. See Wikipedia.
Signal-to-noise ratio. How much stronger the signal is than background noise, in dB. See Wikipedia.
A Home Assistant sensor property that controls long-term statistics: measurement for point-in-time values, total_increasing for counters. See Home Assistant developer docs.
The decimal number on the Taggle label (often ID:xxxxxx) that's sent in every radio message. Not the meter serial number.
A method for decoding convolutional codes by finding the most likely original message. See Wikipedia.
ha-taggle is experimental, receive-only and unofficial. It is not affiliated with Taggle Systems or any council or utility. Only receive your own meter, and never touch the utility's equipment. All IDs in this wiki are fictional. · Repository · Report an issue · Glossary
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