The Sync Registers feature lets utilities get synchronized billing reads for each register of a compound meter. To accomplish this, the feature uses a Sync Tolerance value to determine how far back to look for high and low register reads with matching date-time stamps.
- For exports performed via the Monitor page, sync tolerance is always 24 hours.
- Export Data Service v1 and v2 API-based exports let you specify sync tolerance in minutes.
As you are probably aware, we stagger endpoint communication times to optimize network performance. For some utilities, such staggered read times from the high and low sides of a compound meter required special handling where billing was concerned. The Sync Registers feature accommodates those utilities whose business logic requires that compound meter billing reads have the same data and time stamp.
Note: The Sync Registers feature requires endpoints that send data to BEACON over a network. Hybrid combinations of endpoints, for example, one ORION Cellular endpoint and an ORION Mobile Read endpoint, are not supported.
What Sync Tolerance Should You Use?
If you are exporting billing reads from the BEACON Monitor page, that decision is made for you. Sync tolerance is always 24 hours. If you are exporting billing reads using the Export Data Service v1/eds/read or v2/eds/read, consider the following:
If the endpoints connected to a compound meter communicate at very different times–for example, one reports at 11 pm and the other at 10 am–BEACON may not find synced reads unless the export takes place after both endpoints have communicated with the system. As a result, we recommend exporting reads from a date before today; e.g. today -1 or today -2 as shown in the diagram below.
For today -1, pass 1440 minutes as the sync tolerance value. For -2, pass 2880 as the sync tolerance value.
Note: Because the system is looking back in time x number of minutes, the latest reads displayed on a meter card (Figure 1 below) will not match the reads returned in the billing read export (Figure 2 below). Instead, the exported reads for the high and low registers of the compound meter will have matching date-time stamps from a previous date.
Figure 1. Notice the Read Dates for the Low Flow and High Flow sides of a compound meter.
Figure 2. The resulting export from the Monitor page looked back 24 hours from “now” on 2022-11-14 and returned reads with matching read times that fell within the 24-hour sync tolerance window. In this case, 12:59:59 on 2022-11-14.
