Gas meter - AI-on-the-edge

This mount is designed to attach an ESP32-CAM microcontroller to a gas meter. Together with the open source firmware "AI-on-the-edge" (https://github.com/jomjol/AI-on-the-edge-device) of the user Jomjol it can read the gas meter automatically and send the current counter status to a server via MQTT.

You can find my tutorial for this project on Youtube: https://youtu.be/iUgxwbfkIqU

Note: My shown kromschroeder gas meter has a recess in which magnetic pulses can be read with a reed switch. These are given at each zero crossing of the second decimal place of the counter. This would certainly have been the simpler approach than using the ESP32-cam shown here.

If you still want to continue:

It is a good idea to print the model with black filament to avoid unnecessary light reflections on the meter glass. I realized this too late, so I printed the mount in white, which also works with a little fiddling.

In order to create controlled conditions during photography, it would of course have been even better to design a closed housing. However, this was countered by the longer printing time and higher printing costs. Since my meters are located in a permanently dimmed utility room, I opted for this solution. The advantage is that you can still read or check the meter values manually without removing or converting them.

Remixes and improvements of my model are welcome though, you can find the FreeCAD model in the download section as well.

Jomjol, the AI-on-the-edge-Developer, has also a Thingiverse-Account:
https://www.thingiverse.com/jomjol/

2021-05-01 - Revision A: Orientation of the ESP32-Cam rotated to landscape format