Heatmeter on Kickstarter
 

This looks like an interesting project. Kind of looks like a ScanGuage for the home heating system.
Heatmeter on kickstarter

Though really I think it is just a timer that watches the flame.

My thermostat along with some others display energy use of how long the car for heat is for the furnace and air conditioner. It is close enough to the gas runtime for most furnaces. Mine I have to calculate the number of cycles and remove 2 minutes from each cycle because that is how long it takes for my furnace to actually kick the burners on. When I have done load testing on the two coldest nights of this year I just listened for it to kick on and counted the cycles to get the actual natural gas on-time.

For my 2100 sq ft house my load was 24563BTU/hr for the first 9 hours of January 21st(no sun) average temperature -7 degrees with a 78 degree difference between the outside and inside. Once I have finished my energy retrofit(non-invasive, not pulling down walls) I will be able to see the improvements in comparison to this number.

The issue with the heatmeter device is that it doesn't monitor the level of gas for 2-stage furnaces, there are 2-stage thermostats that count the call for heat time for each stage so you don't need something like this.

Creator YSHAPE Inc. about 18 hours ago

@Florin - the HeatMeter only measures on and off times from the boiler or furnace; we've added a section to the FAQ on what inputs we need from the homeowner (to clarify again what we have in the description).

Seems kinda basic.. Seems like you might want a smart controller instead of a monitor..?

Its much like like a whole house meter in that it can save you money when see its costing you more per hour then the warmth is worth, to you, in your poverty or Scottish ancestry which ever is more prevalent.

When ever i see a Professor indorsing a students Project I always imagine they are Partners in The company.
HE was my Best Student, I new Big things were going to happen for him blah-blah-blah.
I am either cynic or perceptive, perhaps both is more accurate. Yikes a perceptive cynic, I will try to be nice..

When I first posted this I thought it had some way to measure the fuel. I was dissapointed to see it only watches the flame and estimates fuel burn. I have been looking for a way to measure the fuel I use to heat my house.

If you use a timer or have a run-time clock on your oil burner,
using the GPH spec on the nozzle is going to be pretty close to actual use.

I remember a discussion about using an Arduino with an optical sensor to observe a water meter. The sensor sent a ping each time the dial completed a revolution, so you just had to record the time between pings. So how about installing this on a gas/oil meter? If the utility won't allow it on the meter going to the house, then buy an old meter and have it installed next to the furnace/boiler. This will give you good resolution even with a modulated burner (like mine, which can be anywhere between14 and 6 kW).