Hi guys
Does anyone know how I would go about reading the gas usage from my smart meter Liberty EG4v11?
There doesn’t seam to be an LED on the front, only an IRDA port
I doubt Hall effect would work as there is no spinning dial.
Have you looked at the IRDA port with a camera phone? Some IRDA port’s pulse the same way as a visible LED whilst not communicating via IRDA. The shop pulsecounter will read IR pulses too.
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Oooo will my camera see that… let me try
Most, but not all digital camera’s see IR.
If you do not see anything from the meter, just test the camera’s ability to see IR using a tv remote.
Tested my phone on a remote and it showed the IR
Nice one 
Just need to test the meter now
How would the light reader from the shop connect up ?
I have an emon pi and Arduino TX currently monitoring electricity
Thanks
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and if you do see a pulse, you need to check the duration between the pulses varies with load (in case it’s just a comms request or indication of life). In fact, thinking about it, if the IR led was also a pulsed output there would most likely be some form of scaling/units written on the meter face eg 1000imps/kw etc, I can’t tell from the pic, nor do I know that that text must be there for IR output.
The pulse counter has a RJ45 plug and can plug into the emonpi, I’m not sure what an “Arduino TX” is, if it’s a post 2015 emonTx, it will plug in as per the emonPi. Otherwise, the plug can be chopped off (or a suitable socket used) and the 3 wires connected directly.
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Is this of any help?
It’s an EG4v10. i.e. not the exact same model of gas meter the OP said he has, but the markings
appear to be the same or very similar to the EG4v11 model
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That is certainly more readable, but there’s no evidence of any pulse units. Where that leaves us I’m unsure, it’s a different model and I’m not sure the markings will definitely be there as it’s not a standard pulse output (assuming there is a pulse). Whilst a positive confirmation would have been encouraging, the absence might not be so significant, but thanks all the same Bill.
Personally I think it’s a of a long shot, but well worth the time of pointing a camera at it to confirm that.
I’ll test it tonight thanks
This is the meter spec sheet http://m.securemeters.com/application/files/3315/2480/8852/Liberty_EG4V10.pdf
And it looks like this is the IR port https://www.connectingindustry.com/ENERGYMANAGEMENT/putting-old-digital-meters-online-with-new-optical-probe-technology.aspx
Sorry to resurrect an old thread, but did you ever get anywhere with this @Robbrad ?
I’ve got the same gas meter and I’m interested in getting this hooked up to my emonPi and then onto the new Home Energy module in Home Assistant.
Cheers, Mick
Hi Mick,
I too have the same gas meter, keen to log it’s usage, but now not convinced it’s possible now having read this thread, did either of you get anywhere?
Cheers,
Andy
Hi Andy
In the end I managed get things into HA by using Glowstick USB device
Then it might have been these instructions on the HA forum (can’t fully remember, sorry, but there’s plenty of chatter on the HA forum)
Hope this helps.
You could try this ESP32-Cam on your water meter with "AI-on-the-edge" -- also for gas and power meters - YouTube
Thanks both, really interesting, I’ll have a good look into both options, I’ve since contacted Secure directly, they have confirmed that there is no light pulse on their meter, or any other signal you can wire to.
The meter communicates through the electricity meter, unfortunately I’ve had the Liberty elec meter swapped out by Octopus, so the gas meter is all alone and dumb, one of the reasons I want to get the data out direct. The other reason is to understand exactly how much heat our house uses, so I can get the heat pump size bang on when the time comes.
if I can’t get the gas measurements from the meter then maybe a heat meter, or flow + delta T will be the way to go. I’ll start to look into this now too.