Welcome to forum!
English only forum… 
German answer would be flagged right away.
Hi Mark,
Great work. Really interesting. We also have these meters being deployed here in Denmark and I will try and read it with your setup.
Can you share some more pictures of the device mounted?
Also I am happy to share my experience and help on this project.
Thanks once again.
Br.
Mads
Unfortuantely I’m not using the IR interface, but the NFC interface.
If you find a was to do it via IR, let us know 
Could you guys share which exact ESP-32 S3 works well? I’m checking aliexpress and I can see -N8R2, N16R8 and some other types. The difference seems to be flash and psram.
I’m using an ESP32‑S3 WROOM N16R8 Cam (mainly because I had a spare one).
Any ESP32‑S3 board should work as long as it offers enough GPIOs. Many compact ESP32 variants have too few usable pins, which isn’t sufficient for an NFC module. The board I’m using exposes significantly more pins, and they can be repurposed if the camera module and SD‑card aren’t needed.
This is the one I’m using:
This one would also work:
These two wouldn’t work (do not buy):
As for flash and PSRAM, it’s not critical for this project, but I’d still recommend getting the N16R8. It usually costs the same, and you’ll have more flexibility to reuse the module for other projects later.
Thank you, I ordered the one with more memory. I am currently using the AI on edge to read my meter but I thought it would be interesting to test the NFC read out too.
Hi!
I’m new with ESP32 boards, but managed to get everything configured.
One thing I found out, was that I ordered ESP32 S3 devkitc 1 n16r8 board, and it didn’t have GPIO23 pin. So I connected the pins as follows, don’t know if this is right or wrong:
pn5180_mosi_pin: GPIO6
pn5180_miso_pin: GPIO7
pn5180_sck_pin: GPIO18
pn5180_nss_pin: GPIO14
pn5180_busy_pin: GPIO16
pn5180_rst_pin: GPIO17
Everything seems to work with above connections.
However, when I’m trying to read my water meter, I get error messages in the log:
[I][qalcosonicnfc:200]: *** Water meter not found or did not reply!
[E][qalcosonicnfc:218]: Error in getInventory: No card detected!
I tried to position the sensor everywhere around the water meter, with the help of images you posted above, I tried literally every centimeter of my water meter, but no luck. I can read the water meters NFC with mentioned Android app, so water meter is sending data and with that I can see that at least my phone gets the NFC best from the top of meter (on display side). But the PN5180 can’t get anything.
So I started to troubleshoot my board, firstly starting with 5V and 3,3V inputs. 3,3V pin was giving excactly 3,30V. But I found out that my 5V pin was giving only 0,5V voltage? Connections in both ends are good. When I disconnect the 5V cable from the PN5180, voltage in ESP32 board 5V pin rises to 4,5V (which seems fine). Again when I connect the cable, voltage drops to 0,5V.
Do you have any ideas what might be causing this? I tried to google but couldn’t find much. Somewhere was mentioned that 5V voltage comes straight from the power adapter, so it is not even regulated by ESP32 board? I tried few different USB-power adapters and USB-cables but there is no difference.
Has anyone tested that when powered on and measuring the 5V pin voltage, what readouts do you get?
Didn’t know how close to the answer I was…
Found this topic, I have this exactly same board:
According to that you have to solder a small bridge to be able to use that 5V pin. And I did that and straight away I get 5V voltage from the pin also when connected to PN5180.
Now when I place the board on top of the water meter everything works flawlessly! I don’t know if this is basic thing for ESP32 heavy users, but atleast I didn’t find any hints easily…
Hey @dbmaxpayne,
first of all, thank you very much for your GitHub project. Before discovering it, I was using AI on the Edge, but it never worked reliably for me. Switching to NFC instead has been a game changer. It works like a charm now.
I do have two questions though:
- It looks like your project is gaining more and more attention, and people have started creating pull requests (including me
). Do you have time to review them, or would you prefer that people maintain their own forks for these changes? - Do you happen to have a Buy Me a Coffee link or a PayPal address so people can send you a few euros as a thank you for the effort you’ve put into this?
Hey @Jack92,
No worries.
Happy to hear that it is helping people out
As for the other topics:
- I have just merged all open PRs.
I somehow didn’t notice they were there. - Good idea. I might do that in the future. Thanks for the hint
Cheers,
Mark
You will find location of Axioma Qalcosonic W1 NFC radiation antenna on FCC approval test report at this PDF-page.
Probably you may improve your setup by relocating your PN5180 antenna board.
Thank's for sharing that. Out of topic but the battery arrangement is pretty interesting.
Just here to say that it works great !
I have a ESP32-WROOM-32 DevKit and Elechouse P5180 NFC module. Easy to connect since the module has a connector and cable bundle, no soldering required. Hope these links help, if someone needs them 
… and as only 2 links are allowed per post for new users, here are the details about the module, a link to the cable bundle, and a connection table:
http://8.217.75.21/Industrial/Multilingual/CBAA0032-020_UK.pdf
I’ve put together a complete open-source Qalcosonic W1 NFC reader based on the PN5180 and Seeed Studio XIAO ESP32-C3.
The project includes the ESPHome configuration, custom adapter PCB, tested 3D-printable meter mount, manufacturing files and assembly documentation. It reads water consumption, flow, temperature, battery status and meter diagnostics directly over NFC — no camera or OCR needed.
Big thanks to @dbmaxpayne for the original esphome_qalcosonicnfc component and the work that made this project possible! 
It is interesting that Axoima include a local NFC interface in all their smart meters and a flexible AMI for utility updating. Has polling the NFC portion frequently reduced battery life?