Granted Patent B2

US 9,046,390 · App. 14/162,263 · Granted Jun 2, 2015

Abstract

Claims (78)

1. An apparatus to monitor one or more utility meters comprising:

a communication unit comprising a processor, a communication interface coupled to the processor, and a probe interface coupled to the processor; and

a meter monitoring probe comprising a probe head coupled by a cable to a probe connector capable to mate with the probe interface;

wherein the probe head comprises:

an image sensor;

an externally visible indicator; and

a button;

wherein the probe head is capable to detect a characteristic of a utility meter that is dependent on a usage of a utility metered, and send information related to the characteristic to the processor;

the processor is capable to receive the information from the probe head and send a message related to the usage of the utility over the communication interface; and

the image sensor is capable to capture an image in response to a press of the button.

2. The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein the processor is capable to check the image and to indicate, with the externally visible indicator, whether the image sensor is positioned to capture a view of the utility meter useful to determine the usage of the utility.

3. The apparatus of claim 1 , wherein the probe head comprises:

a primary housing that contains circuitry to detect the characteristic of the utility meter;

at least one flange protruding from the primary housing; and

adhesive on the primary housing and the at least one flange to attach the probe head to the utility meter.

4. The apparatus of claim 3 , wherein the probe head further comprises:

a groove to facilitate removal of the at least one flange at a time of installation on the utility meter.

5. A system to monitor usage of one or more utilities comprising:

a communication unit comprising a processor, a communication interface coupled to the processor, and a probe interface coupled to the processor; and

a meter monitoring probe comprising a probe head coupled by a cable to a probe connector capable to mate with the probe interface; and

a device capable to receive the message from the processor;

wherein the probe head comprises:

an image sensor;

an indicator; and

a button;

wherein the probe head is capable to detect a characteristic of a utility meter that is dependent on a usage of a utility metered, and send information related to the characteristic to the processor;

the processor is capable to receive the information from the probe head and send a message related to the usage of the utility over the communication interface;

the image sensor is capable to capture an image in response to a press of the button; and

the device is capable to check the image received in the message from the processor, and send a message to the processor to control the indicator to indicate whether the image sensor is positioned to capture a view of the utility meter useful to determine the usage of the utility.

6. The system of claim 5 , wherein the message travels, at least in part, over a wireless network.

7. The system of claim 5 , wherein the message travels, at least in part, over the Internet.

8. The system of claim 5 , wherein the device is remotely located from the communication unit.

9. A method to determine a reading of a utility meter comprising:

acquiring an image of at least a portion of a display of the utility meter;

performing optical character recognition (OCR) on at least a portion of the image;

determining a probability of successful OCR;

using a numerical output of the OCR to determine the reading of the utility meter if the probability of successful OCR is at least a predetermined value; and

determining an angle of a dial indicator in at least the portion of the image if the probability of successful OCR is less than the predetermined value, and using the angle of the dial indicator to determine the reading of the utility meter.

10. The method of claim 9 , further comprising performing image processing on the image.

11. The method of claim 10 , wherein the image processing comprises one or more of boundary determination, cropping, resizing, resampling, noise reduction, erosion, dilation, radius calculations, centroid calculations, laplacian filtering, noise reduction, edge enhancement, sharpening, or unsharpening.

12. The method of claim 9 , wherein the acquiring of the image is performed by a probe head, and the performing of OCR is performed by a processor that is remote from the probe head.

13. The method of claim 9 , wherein the acquiring of the image comprises:

capturing an image of at least the portion of the display of the utility meter;

cropping and resizing the image before the performing of OCR.

14. The method of claim 9 , further comprising:

retrieving a previous reading of the utility meter; and

using the previous reading in conjunction with the reading of the utility meter to determine an updated reading of the utility meter;

wherein the updated reading of the utility meter includes more digits that the reading of the utility meter.

15. The method of claim 9 , further comprising:

storing information indicating whether the numerical output of the OCR or the angle of the dial indicator was used for the determination of the reading of the utility meter; and

using the stored information for additional determinations of the reading of the utility meter.

16. The method of claim 9 , further comprising:

storing the image and the reading of the utility meter; and

determining an audit reading based of the stored image using a different technique;

checking the reading of the utility meter against the audit reading of the utility meter based on the stored image.

17. At least one non-transitory machine readable medium having one or more instructions stored thereon, that in response to being executed on a computing device cause the computing device to carry out a method comprising:

acquiring an image of at least a portion of a display of the utility meter;

performing optical character recognition (OCR) on at least a portion of the image;

determining a probability of successful OCR;

using a numerical output of the OCR to determine the reading of the utility meter if the probability of successful OCR is at least a predetermined value; and

determining an angle of a dial indicator in at least the portion of the image if the probability of successful OCR is less than the predetermined value, and using the angle of the dial indicator to determine the reading of the utility meter.

18. The at least one non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 17 , the method further comprising performing image processing on the image.

19. The at least one non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 18 , wherein the image processing comprises one or more of boundary determination, cropping, resizing, resampling, noise reduction, erosion, dilation, radius calculations, centroid calculations, laplacian filtering, noise reduction, edge enhancement, sharpening, or unsharpening.

20. The at least one non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 17 , wherein the acquiring of the image is performed by a probe head, and the performing of OCR is performed by a processor that is remote from the probe head.

21. The at least one non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 17 , wherein the acquiring of the image comprises:

capturing an image of at least the portion of the display of the utility meter;

cropping and resizing the image before the performing of OCR.

22. The at least one non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 17 , the method further comprising:

retrieving a previous reading of the utility meter; and

using the previous reading in conjunction with the reading of the utility meter to determine an updated reading of the utility meter;

wherein the updated reading of the utility meter includes more digits that the reading of the utility meter.

23. The at least one non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 17 , the method further comprising:

storing information indicating whether the numerical output of the OCR or the angle of the dial indicator was used for the determination of the reading of the utility meter; and

using the stored information for additional determinations of the reading of the utility meter.

24. The at least one non-transitory machine readable medium of claim 17 , the method further comprising:

storing the image and the reading of the utility meter; and

determining an audit reading based of the stored image using a different technique;

checking the reading of the utility meter against the audit reading of the utility meter based on the stored image.

Assignments (9)