ICOUNTER - Development of an Optical Readout Method fot Mechanical Counters

Dirk Benyoucef, Pirmin Held, Thomas Bier

2012

Abstract

Mechanical counters are still very common in electricity, water and gas meters. Automatic readout of the dial count without modifying the mechanics of the counter is only possible using expensive image processing methods. Therefore the topic of this report is a new method for automatically reading out the counter values without the need of additional mechanical or parallel electronic parts inside the counter. Instead the different reflection properties of the different digits are measured and evaluated. This is done using only simple electronic parts and a microcontroller. In the first part of the paper the hardware for measuring the reflection values is presented. A model of this hardware with special emphasis on the influences of the environment is discussed in the next part. Following this, two classification methods, for distinguishing the digits are analyzed. For showing the properties of the new readout system measurements and simulations are given in the end.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Benyoucef D., Held P. and Bier T. (2012). ICOUNTER - Development of an Optical Readout Method fot Mechanical Counters . In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Pattern Recognition Applications and Methods - Volume 2: ICPRAM, ISBN 978-989-8425-99-7, pages 576-580. DOI: 10.5220/0003779605760580

in Bibtex Style

@conference{icpram12,
author={Dirk Benyoucef and Pirmin Held and Thomas Bier},
title={ICOUNTER - Development of an Optical Readout Method fot Mechanical Counters},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Pattern Recognition Applications and Methods - Volume 2: ICPRAM,},
year={2012},
pages={576-580},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0003779605760580},
isbn={978-989-8425-99-7},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Pattern Recognition Applications and Methods - Volume 2: ICPRAM,
TI - ICOUNTER - Development of an Optical Readout Method fot Mechanical Counters
SN - 978-989-8425-99-7
AU - Benyoucef D.
AU - Held P.
AU - Bier T.
PY - 2012
SP - 576
EP - 580
DO - 10.5220/0003779605760580