Photograph energy labels in a store and compare lifetime running costs
Beginner8h1–2
Tesseract.jsNext.jsCharts
17/20Water Meter Photo Tracker
Snap your water meter weekly and spot leaks and spikes.
Beginner10h1–2 people17/20 fit
Build Water Meter Photo Tracker for households and housing societies in ~10h with 1–2 people. Stack: Tesseract.js + Next.js + Charts.
Why it wins: Tiny build with a real household benefit.
Build flow
01 · Problem
Leaks and wasteful use go unnoticed until a huge bill arrives.
02 · Solution
OCR the meter reading from a photo, store readings, chart usage and flag abnormal jumps that suggest a leak.
03 · Build
- 1OCR digits from the photo
- 2Store readings
- 3Compute daily use
- 4Flag outliers
04 · Demo
Upload two meter photos and show the leak warning.
MVP checklist
- Meter OCR
- Usage chart
- Leak alerts
- Society leaderboard
Tech stack
| Tech | Role | |
|---|---|---|
| Tesseract.js | OCR in the browser | AI |
| Next.js | Frontend + API routes | Web |
| Charts | Data visualisation | UI |
Reference repos
Open-source projects you can build on. Links checked 2026-10-31.
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