I want to monitor the meter's on the side of my house for electricity and natural gas. For electricity I would prefer to use the spinning disk because it has more resolution. For gas, there are just spinning needles.
Obviously I can't crack open the glass and psychically attach a sensor to the meters; So I was thinking of something along the line of an optical system, perhaps with lasers and a light receiver. I'm have no experience playing with light sensors, so I'm not sure how plausible this idea is. I would really need a small focused beam to be able to pick up the lines on the disk. Also I'm concerned about the sun screwing things up.
To be fair , mine is inside, in the dark so it doesn't have to cope with the sun. My gas meter has an odometer type dial with a reflective bit on the 0 of the last reel, but it also has a revolving magnet inside which can switch a reed switch very nicely. To read a needle type meter could be tricky if it doesn't have something else that can be accessed. First thought would be a webcam hooked up to a computer, that reads the positions of the arrows.
Those sensors look great, but I don't think I can use them anywhere. I added water meter to the list, and I figured it was a good idea to take some pictures so you can see the situation. I really don't want to webcam it, just to complicated to be worth it...
I may have have lucked out on my power meter, I just notice while taking pictures that I have a few more options than I thought. On the side shot you can see a spinning gear (spinning off the worm gear) with holes in it that I could shine a laser through to the other side, however that gear spins super slow, where most of the time you cant even see it move. However, I then noticed some small holes in the big disk 180 degrees apart. I'm fairly confident I can get a clean laser shot through those holes. While I wont have the super resolution I was after, it will be good enough.
The gas meter is all dials, currently no good ideas for that.
Water meter is similar, but they do have some electronics on it that allow them to check the meter from outside, I'm not quite sure how it works, but I can look into it and perhaps tap into that.
My sensors probably wouldn't work too well in the US, on a UK meter which don't have to be weatherproof, the flat glass runs very close to the spinning disk. You can't see in at the side of them though......
They haven't got round to metering water on older properties here yet, long may it continue
