Anyone having success reading gas meter using Line Bricklet?

[JavaLaurence]

Hi,

 

I'm attempting to track our gas consumption by having a Line bricklet look at the last digit of our meter, which contains a metalic reflective area on the '6' digit.

 

So far my code can track the meter's counter, but without 100% precision, which means that a tracking error accumulates over time until the physical counter value completely differs from what the software manages.

 

Just wondering if anyone has a set-up that works 100% ?

 

Thx.

 

  Laurence

 

[marcop]

I had some success using the Hall Effect bricklet as described in this thread http://www.tinkerunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,2277.0.html. Your gas meter might also contain a small magnet on one of the wheels.

 

One thing you might try is shielding the unit from all light.

[JavaLaurence]

Some success is not really what I'm after. I'm after 100.000% reliability, long-term. So that those silly mechanical counters can be completely ignored henceforth.

 

And that is probably only achievable with a completely power-independent solution: if the mains electricity goes away, whatever runs the Tinkerforge logic (RED Brick, Raspberry, whatever), still needs to carry on as if nothing happened.

 

But currently my problem is in the algorithm.. it's not good enough to translate the raw signal into something that can accurately track the counter. Did you use anything fancy, on the software side, to avoid being tripped by noisy raw input?