I’m going to pick some up from jaycar later today, once i build my I’ll share my schematics
you may want to lookup the difference between pull_down and pull_up GPIOs they vary from dev board to board.
I’ve had some success with the glass reed switches from Jaycar. It seems to be working well.
The first one would barely register a pulse on the bench with a magnet but the second (installed much jankier in the meter!) seems to be working well! Not sure if it matters but I paid close attention the second time not to bend the legs too tight. This article was useful: How_to_Handle_a_Reed_Switch-1.pdf
The code below isn’t perfect and I’m a novice, but it seems to be working well. If the community would like to see an extended version that includes local caching of the meter values to survive a reboot just say the word.
Here’s a subsection of my ESPHome code running on ESP8266.
sensor:
- platform: pulse_counter
pin:
number: GPIO15
inverted: True
unit_of_measurement: 'L/min'
update_interval: 60s
name: 'Water Usage'
id: waterusage
accuracy_decimals: 0
filters:
- multiply: 5
#If your meter is 25mm to 40mm then set to 5. If you meter is 15mm to 20mm then set to 0.5
total:
name: "Water Usage Total"
id: waterusagetotal
unit_of_measurement: "L"
state_class: total_increasing
device_class: water
accuracy_decimals: 0
filters:
- multiply: 5
#If your meter is 25mm to 40mm then set to 5. If you meter is 15mm to 20mm then set to 0.5
I’m away for a week so excuse delayed responses if you have any questions.
While I’m with South East Water as well my meter looks like meter 3 in the URL referenced at the beginning of this thread (i.e. Read your water meter | South East Water).
I know the meter has seen better days 
No idea about the specs of this meter but does anyone know whether this has a similar reed mechanism that’s used for the meter described at the beginning of this thread? If not it gets pretty engaged as I think I’d have to go down the image recognition route which is challenging for an outdoor device…
The other path might be to wait for a meter upgrade (if this ever happens) as I read that South East Water has digital meters running.
If there is a port, it should be near the gauge numbers. I had to have a dig around mine to find it. It could also have a plastic plug covering it
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With a bit of a clean up that meter will work with this setup.
It works pretty well.
The beauty of the LJ18A3-8-Z/BX-5V is that it connects directly to the Esp32 without the need for any resistors etc.