Wattvision Meter Reader

Just a quick note about the Wattvision electric meter reader product. I haven't seen one in person, I was just reviewing the website, but this looks like about the simplest solution out there right now. I still like the idea of the RF approach, but visually inspecting the options on the meter is a good option too.

It's a little spendy at $250, but I suppose that's not too bad if it gives you the online tools and such as well. I think that a maker could easily hack together the same system with an Arduino and Wifi shield or Rasberry Pi and Wifi for under a hundred. And I think a couple of AVRs and a cheap RF serial link could do the job for about $30.