DIY Inductive Zigbee water meter

Hey that’s a pity, trust that you have tested all positions around the meter?

Yeah, I played around with it for a bit but no luck. However I am experimenting at the moment with TCRT5000 Infrared Reflective Sensor. It runs on 3.3 Volts, just hooked GND, VCC to the CC2530 extra pins and the digital output(DO) of the TCRT5000 to the CC2530 P12. When carefully positioning it then the watermeters red dial makes it dark enough to not detect…otherwise the watermeter background is white.

I am not sure if that is the correct/safe way to do it, but in initial tests I am now able to get the counter to work. I still need to create a proper mount for it, since it seems to be very sensitive to the position. There might be a problem when the needle stays in a certain position and then the sensor might be between on and off and start to flicker…causing the caunter to increase. Ill experiment a bit more with it…maybe someone can tell me if the schema used is a very wrong way of doing it.

Very interesting, please keep us informed.

Hi,
I have documented my journey in integrating my gas & water meter here step by step: GitHub - geertmeersman/energie-meter: Build a cheap water and gas usage sensor using ESPhome, a proximity sensor and a TCRT5000 Infrared Reflective Sensor and integrate it into Home Assistant
For the water meter i use a proximity sensor, and for the gas meter I use a TCRT5000 meter.

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Another variation on this topic :slight_smile:

what is the duration of battery?

You can buy a Elster PR6 sensor that will fit on your water meter giving you 1 pulse per litre.

Hi guys, just wanted to share I managed to get the watermeter to work. It’s installed near my gate, more than 30m of the coordinator and it’s working really well.
Thanks for sharing such good project !

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That is what Craig is successfully using. Seems to work well for him. It is detecting the IR reflected light and is counting revolutions using the analog input.