I've been going down this rabbit hole, there are two alternative options if you're looking for a side project, 1 is "ai on the edge" (Google it it's a pretty cool project), which is basically an esp32 + camera that takes a photo of your meter on a regular basis and OCRs the data, option 2 is (and I'll be trying this this week) to get a magnetometer hooked up to an esp32 to read the little magnetic pulses the impeller (in my case) makes (which is how the meter hardware they have reads it anyway), can have calibration difficulties but will be so cheap, there are also existing esphome projects for this.