Project: AI on the edge

Last week I found myself down a rabbit hole on quite an awesome new project. The project I would like to tell you about is AI on the edge. It is a project to digitalize analog meters (Energy, Gas or water).

TLTR: An ESP32 Cam with image recognition to read gas usage in Home Assistant!

The project is a fully open-source project on GitHub with excellent documentation, all you need is an ESP32 camera, a 3D printer or cardboard, and some tape!

I took some rough measurement, fired up the 3D printer and started preparing the esp32 cam module.

After some difficulties with the initial setup (tape did not stick) we now have a steady flow of data coming into Home Assistant, giving insight on our usage and helping us make the decision if we should go for a fixed gas contract again.

Here some picture of the setup: