Mechanical water meter generally refers to gear water meter. When water flows, the turbine rotates to measure the flow of water. The disadvantage of this kind of water meter is that it can only measure and cannot be connected with modern automation system. They are mainly used for users' household instruments or single-point applications without automation systems. Their advantage lies in their low price.
The other is a smart water meter. Compared with the traditional mechanical water meter, the so-called intelligent water meter mostly adopts mechanical plus electronic metering or unified electronic metering, which has more data output functions, and can be equipped with corresponding output modes as required, such as RS232/RS485, HART, wireless Zigbee, Bluetooth, GPRS, etc. The advantage of this kind of water meter is that it is relatively intelligent and can be connected with automation system, but it also has many disadvantages, such as huge volume and the need for external power supply.
At present, the most commonly used smart water meters mainly include electromagnetic water meters and ultrasonic water meters, both of which have their own advantages in measurement. If higher accuracy is needed, electromagnetic water meter and multi-channel ultrasonic water meter can be selected. If the accuracy of simple measurement is low, you can choose mono ultrasonic water meter because its price is better than electromagnetic water meter.
If you are interested in electromagnetic water meters, you can try to learn about TSDS electromagnetic water meters.