Abstract:At present, water, heat, gas, and electricity four meters belong to different departments for management. Although similar in meter reading and payment processing, they cannot share the same resources, which is a waste of workloads and inconvenient for users. This paper discusses the technique framework of “four meters in one”, proposed a method of modifying the current system from three aspects, i.e., the master station, the communication channel, and the devices. This paper introduced the main design principle of protocol converter and the improvements of the communication protocols of centralized meter reading terminal, and extending downward communication ways on protocol converter to match the present situation of diversification of communication about water meter, heat meter, gas meter in the market. With the popularity of the smart grid, increase protocol converters and upgrading existing centralized concentrator program on this good platform for the data acquisition, through the simple wiring after the implementation of rapid economic four meters data collection. Using this proposed method, the demonstration projects shows that, it is easy and fast to build, meter reading runs well, and the one-time acquisition success rate is above 95%.