did you check to see if it might have permanent magnets - if so you might be able to use a reed switch to count.
if you can get a model number and manufacture you might be able to google a spec sheet for your meter.

also google gas and or electric meter reading - a while back I found some pages on reading color change on dials i.e. black to white with ir - or something like that.

I'll see if I can't find the links and repost here if I find them.

I have several one-wire runs that are close to 40 feet. I use 4 wire alarm wire. The only issue that I had was if I mixed parasite mode power - so now I just run 3-wires to each 18b20 and it's been working great for over 6 months.

as a note on with the playground example I used (anyways that's what I think I used): it was set up for the 18s20 - so it couldn't find mine until I killed the device checking part of the code. It was also set up for parasite mode it worked with 3-wires as well but after the fact I was able to change the power up flag and remove charging delays that are needed if you use parasite power option.

thanks - I've ordered my $5 in parts. I hope I don't win the direct strike lottery...

what resistor watt ratings did you use?
what about capacitor voltage ratings?
or can one use run of the mill parts and not worry about it?

thanks Pete

and comments on the odd looking and off color pvc parts - well odd from were I shop for plumping pvc parts. they look greenish to me. Here in the usa - blue or grey (electric), white(pvc), yellowish (cpvc), black (abs), maybe purple (for grey water) but greenish??
 
I dig the white bottle cap anemometer cups - the other day I was thinking that fence post caps of the al type might work - but they might be to heavy. Maybe they make a similar cap in pvc? or get a big jar lid and bang it into the correct shape? Disk drive platers are about the correct size and thickness but got that big hole in the center... or heat/melt/bend pvc using fence post caps as a guide template. I've also heard of people using soap laddle spoons or measuring cups/spoons.

anyways - nice work and thanks for sharing.

look at pachube com (this is my first post so it doesn't let me put the dot in) it's open source and let's you do input and outputs - look on the tutorials. They also have some arduino code. I've only used it for output where I send data to the pachube server.

yes - people cheating to get better times

if it doesn't make a difference (a few inches) then lasers sound like the best.

I sort of looked into it a while back for bike racing - I saw some intresting stuff for horse racing - and what people did to get better times - by pointing lasers or ir remotes a bit before their horse crossed the line to get a better time...

issue with laser is that you don't have a flat front profile - I would assume that your bumper height's are all over the place with bumps and different car makes. Maybe 4 inches doesn't make a different for what you're doing. In bike, house and car racing (and others) they use high speed slit camera's for that reason because it does - you could also use rfid - you measure off the front x distance for each car with the transponder. Or use contact strips on the ground to pickup the tire contact.

display data on an arduino server web page
use phone to see your data (guess that only works if you got a wifi/3g/edge phone).
You could also port forward to your arduino via your router to your web page for external views
or push to pachube.

I also think that you could pick up some of those cheap lcd picture frames some allow internet access or display of a web page.