A hack to monitor your natural gas meter by Beerware license creator

phk.freebsd.dk

I'm currently playing with the XML stream from my currentcost meter [1]. Within a week I've reduced about 20% of my electricity use. I wish I could track my Gas usage with such ease.

[1] - http://www.currentcost.com/

Looks pretty interesting. What did you have to buy exactly to get XML Stream?

I bought the 'classic' current cost meter and the USB cable. All current cost devices provide an XML stream from a serial port.

There could well be a start-up opportunity right there - create simple wireless sensors that can be location near meters and feed this to a web site that can track and provide advice on energy usage as well as giving notification of what current energy usage is remotely.

You mean like this one?

http://www.testfreaks.com/blog/review/black-and-decker-power...

Aside from the available ones that track the spin of electrical meters or grab data from the optical port. This is the first one I've seen for a gas meter though. Clever hack. Although my gas meter uses the old dials with needles, the same kind of optosenor hack could work there too.

Pity that's a standalone unit - can't see reference to any kind of data interface.

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