I have previously tried to read the water meter using a phototransistor and a IR diode, but have not managed to get it hundred percent stable.

Instead, I have now used a little more technically challenging solution but it works perfect.

I use a webcam and calculates one of the dialers position and movements.

The solution consist of:

• A webcam with USB connection.

• Two white LEDs. Used to have a constant uniform illumination of the meter.

• A Raspberry Pi with some image processing software.

I have adapted this opensource software to my camera and this specific application.

The Raspberry Pi is managing to read and process approx 10 frames per second. I have defined eight zones in the image and keeps track of when these zones goes from light to dark when the dial passes. My dial makes one revolution per liter of water so it will be a resolution of 0.125 liters.

Attached is avideo clip and a couple of pictures, that shows how it looks like in practice. (The video clip is a bit old an taken when I only had four zones defined)

Video Clip - Water Meter Reading

My first Senseboard is now Up and Running. Have even tested to reinstall the sketch. No issues so far. Thanx for this product.

@John
The output from the water meter reader, published in MQTT, are:

1. Average flow last minute (liter/minute)
2. Average flow last 10 minute (liter/10minutes)
3. Consumption last drain (liter). The number of liters between the last two times with no consumption.
4. Total consumption (liter)

The leakage monitoring is very simple. It uses only value 1 and checks if the flow > 0 during a couple of minutes. The accepted duration is very low at night and when nobody is at home.

All info about the used software you will find earlier in this thread.

@Moshe-Livne
Two main reasons to monitor the water meter

1. Leakage monitoring. The system can detect very small leakages and send notifications to my mobile.
2. I'm interested in my water consumption. The values are logged and displayed in my home automation system.

I'm currently working on version 2.0 of the Water Meter Reader. The new version will be based on an OpenWrt device called Dragino and will have a nice looking web GUI for setup and maintenance.

Of course can I share my Raspberry Pi code. Attached you will find a copy of it. It has dependencies to:

• libsdl1.2-dev

• libmosquitto-dev

The sdl library can you install the ordinary way with apt-get. But libmosquitto you have to install following these steps:

• wget http://repo.mosquitto.org/debian/mosquitto-repo.gpg.key

• sudo apt-key add mosquitto-repo.gpg.key

• cd /etc/apt/sources.list.d/

• sudo wget http://repo.mosquitto.org/debian/mosquitto-wheezy.list

• apt-get update

• apt-cache search mosquitto

• apt-get install libmosquitto-dev

It also has a dependency to an external MQTT-broker at 192.168.0.23. You probably have to adapt that to something else or remove it if you dont want to publish the values via MQTT.

In the structure REGION the sizes and positions of the "Hit areas" are defined.

water-meter.tar.gz

I have previously tried to read the water meter using a phototransistor and a IR diode, but have not managed to get it hundred percent stable.

Instead, I have now used a little more technically challenging solution but it works perfect.

I use a webcam and calculates one of the dialers position and movements.

The solution consist of:

• A webcam with USB connection.

• Two white LEDs. Used to have a constant uniform illumination of the meter.

• A Raspberry Pi with some image processing software.

I have adapted this opensource software to my camera and this specific application.

The Raspberry Pi is managing to read and process approx 10 frames per second. I have defined eight zones in the image and keeps track of when these zones goes from light to dark when the dial passes. My dial makes one revolution per liter of water so it will be a resolution of 0.125 liters.

Attached is avideo clip and a couple of pictures, that shows how it looks like in practice. (The video clip is a bit old an taken when I only had four zones defined)

Video Clip - Water Meter Reading

My first Senseboard is now Up and Running. Have even tested to reinstall the sketch. No issues so far. Thanx for this product.

I can confirm that the first sensebenders now also have arrived in Gothenburg, Sweden.

I have also ordered a couple of boards to be able to evaulate them as soon as possible.

Just a question:

• What is the expected lifetime of the batteries if you use 2 AA batteries, the default preloaded sketch and reports the temp and humidity values once per minute?