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How to read a water or gas meter into the Energy dashboard with Vision State

Point an ESP32-CAM at a meter and log its total and rate in Home Assistant.

  • Life admin
  • Intermediate
  • 45 minutes
  • From the README
  • Any agent

Authorization notice. Vision State is dual-use. Only use it on software, sites and systems you own or have explicit permission to test.

Who it is forA household that wants its water or gas use tracked automatically without a smart meter.

The problemMechanical meters have to be read by hand, and the readings are not logged anywhere.

The outcomeA meter counter that only goes up, checked before it is published, and shown in the Energy dashboard with an optional rate in m³/h or kW.

What you need first

  • Home Assistant OS or Home Assistant Supervised, version 2025.10 or newer
  • The Mosquitto broker app and the MQTT integration in Home Assistant
  • A camera that Home Assistant can see as a camera entity, or an RTSP or HTTP snapshot URL

Steps

  1. Install the Vision State app from the repository and open it from the sidebar.
  2. Mount an ESP32-CAM or any camera above the meter, then add it to Home Assistant with ESPHome or use its snapshot URL.
  3. Choose New sensor, select the camera, and draw a box around the meter digits or the rolling wheels.
  4. Choose the reading type for a mechanical water or gas meter, or for an LCD or LED power meter.
  5. Open the Energy dashboard in Home Assistant and add the new meter total.

Prompt for your agent

Using the VisionState repo at https://github.com/oleost/VisionState, configure a reading sensor for the camera <camera_entity> on a <water or gas or power> meter. Expected output: a meter total entity that appears in the Home Assistant Energy dashboard. Verify that each new value is higher than or equal to the previous one.

Caveat. The README gives no accuracy figures for meter reading, so compare the first few values against the physical meter before you rely on them.

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