I tried my hand at rigging a proximity sensor to the water meter in my house. Sadly it doesn’t have the spinning magnet for the sensor to pick up.
I looked into other options for pulling data from the meter, but for each method, my very antiquated meter had a complication that would prevent it from working.
TLDR: Any recommendations for a home water meter that’s local and integrates well with home assistant?
I’m going to check with my water company first, but likely will remove the old meter and replumb a new “smart” meter and an automated shut off valve into the water supply. I believe the current meter is leftover from before the utility added new meters further upstream, so I’d rather get rid of the rusty piece of junk anyway.
Definitely check in with the utility before mucking with the meter. You can find your way into a lot of trouble tampering with active meters. Chances are there’s new meter tech out your utility would install, and of which you could take advantage.
Check this thread. https://community.home-assistant.io/t/smart-water-meter/451935 . You’d install it down flow of your utility meter, and would need ESP32 to read the meter. It’s a bit of work, but if you’re already running ESPHome, it looks pretty straightforward.
On a long shot, you might consider looking into an inexpensively RTL-SDR software radio dongle, and use
rtl_433to scan a few common frequencies the utilities use to scan their meters from the street. I happened to find my neighbor’s electrical meter on a common wireless weather station frequency, and if In were so inclined, could publish it to MQTT for HA to pick up.Just a couple of ideas. Good luck!