Trendy WiFi-enabled microcontrollers have made it inexpensive and straightforward to observe every little thing from native climate data to electrical energy utilization with sometimes no various {dollars} value of {hardware} and a little bit little bit of programming information. Monitoring one’s personal utility knowledge is usually a little bit tougher with out interfering with the metering tools, however we’ve got seen some intelligent methods of doing this over time. The newest is that this water meter monitoring machine primarily based on a Raspberry Pi Pico.

The intelligent factor right here isn’t a lot that it’s primarily based on the tiniest of Raspberry Pis, however the way it retains observe of the considerably obscured water circulate data coming from the meter. Utilizing a magnetometer positioned near the meter, the machine can sense the magnetic discipline created as water flows by way of the meter’s inner sensors. The magnetic discipline modifications in a non-obvious approach as water flows by way of it, so this system has to observe for particular peaks within the magnetic discipline. Every of those particular waveforms the magnetometer detects counts to 0.0657 liters of water, which is correct for many functions.

For interfacing with a utility meter, this is without doubt one of the extra environment friendly and chic hacks we’ve seen shortly. There have, in fact, been different makes an attempt to actually learn the meter utilizing net cams and laptop imaginative and prescient software program, however the configuration for these builds is far more advanced than one thing like this. You may interface with loads of utility meters apart from water meters, too, no matter age.