The latest solution comes courtesy of [Keilin Bickar], who’s using the ESP8266 and a serial TTL camera module to read the characters from the LCD of his water meter. With a 3D printed enclosure ...
His solution was to read data from the utility meter using RTL-SDR to fill in the blanks. The results are good so far, and there’s no reason similar readings for gas and water can’t also be done.