Saving Energy Via Webcam-Based Meter Reading?

squoozer writes "Like many people, I am trying to cut down on the amount of energy my family and I use in order to save both the environment and my pay packet. Since I want to do this in as scientific a way as possible, I'm taking meter readings every day and recording them in a spreadsheet (OOo Calc naturally). Currently, in the UK at least, neither gas nor electricity meters can be hooked up to any sort of device that can query the meter for its current reading. Rather than climb down into the cellar every day to read the meters, it would be great if I could simply position a webcam in front of each meter and have the value logged automatically each day. The problem is that while I am a software developer (Java mostly) I have no experience in image processing (dials from the electricity meter) and don't really know where to start with this project." Does anyone have any advice for analyzing the visual data this reader would be gathering?

Comments

what's your goal?

[gEvil (beta)]

I'd say your approach completely depends on your goal. If your goal is as stated, then I'd use the webcams to get shots of the meters, then I'd take the 2-3 minutes or whatever it takes a week to pull up those images and transcribe their values into the spreadsheet. If the goal is a programming exercise, then go to town with figuring out some way to automate that few-minutes-a-week task. Of course, in order to do that, you'll expend a whole lot more energy than you'd take to read the meters (via the webcam shots) yourself.

Simple solution

[halcyon1234]

Post the images as CAPTCHAs that protect porn pictures. You'll have the values typed in for you in no time.

The standards are coming (some already here)

[randyest]

Your power company is probably already looking into standards like Homeplug (main org site) (wiki link) that provide meter data much more accurately than a webcam and image analysis software. This allows them to save money on paying sneaker-net meter readers, and real-time usage data for load balancing and prediction.

Whether or not they'll specifically give you access to the data is somewhat moot, since it's network-over-powerline and there are already consumer devices that can access the same network and (eventually if not already) be hacked to reveal the data being sent from your meter.

It's an exploding industry (like 20-30% CAGR in the US alone, higher in other less-developed areas where the first power meters will be homeplug-capable) so I wouldn't suggest putting too much effort into your image-analysis idea at least for a few months to see what happens in homeplug-world.

Do what the meter supoorts?

[bugg]

Often the meter supports some sort of data export mechanism, and you just need to tie into it. Hacker extraordinaire Poul-Henning Kamp did this with his gas meter.

Re:I don't know if it's anything like in Canada

[the_other_one]

But you must not block the meter dials from view. Someone goes to check the values manually, every once in a while (monthly?).

If you have the same kind of "spinning wheel with a mark" under the small dials, it might be easier to check for the number of revolutions of that wheel.

Of course your biggest power drain will be from the computer that is always on reading the meter.

Re:OCR plugins?

[smellsofbikes]

This guy has an algorithm run in matlab to convert dial indicator readings to numbers using MatLab. He claims 99% accuracy over 2000 readings.