GAS Usage Monitoring ?

[Marcus Warrington <marcus.warrington@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I recently got a nasty surprise when the 6monthly Gas bill arrived and
showed we'd used double the amount of gas than the same period previous
year. I'm at a loss as to how we have managed this and have now started
writing down a meter reading every day.

Whist I was crawling around in the cupboard taking the reading last night I
"discovered" a sticker under the dial enclosure that once removed
revealed an RJ11 connector. A little bit of googling later revealed that
the Schlumberger R5 meter has a pulse output using dry contact reed switch
on pins 3 & 4. I butchered an old RJ11 modem lead I found lying around
and connected pins 3 and 4 to my multimeter and confirmed that the meter
does indeed give a 'contact' every revolution of the wheel i.e. every 1ft3
of gas used.

So my question is has anyone built anything to cheaply interface to this
pulsed output ?  I know I could roll my own using an Arduino or similar but
my electronic skills are pretty much non-existent.

Marcus



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