Okay, so I’ve been messing around with trying to get a good handle on how many people are coming in and out of my buddy’s mall. It’s a real headache, you know? We tried a bunch of different things, and I wanted to share what worked, what didn’t, and what finally cracked the code.
The Early Days (and Epic Fails)
At first, we were totally clueless. We thought, “Hey, let’s just have someone stand there with a clicker!” Yeah, that lasted about a day. It was boring, inaccurate, and the poor guy at the door looked like he wanted to jump off a bridge. We needed something better, and fast.
Then we moved on to some basic infrared beam sensors. You know, the kind that make a little “ding” when someone walks through. These were a little better, but still pretty useless. They couldn’t tell the difference between one person and five people walking in a clump. And forget about it if someone walked in and then right back out – the numbers were all over the place.
Getting a Bit Smarter
We started looking into more advanced stuff. We found out that some of the best choices were thermal, Time-of-Flight and video-base people counters.
- Thermal Counters:At first, we tried some thermal *’s * they’re still not * can’t count precisely when there’s too much people at same time.
- Time-of-Flight (ToF) Sensors:I did a lot of research and ended up trying out a Time-of-Flight sensor. Basically, it uses lasers (but, like, safe ones!) to measure distance super accurately. This thing was way better than the infrared beams. It could actually tell how many people were walking through, even if they were close together.
- Video-Based Systems:This will be a long term * gives you some serious data,but there’s a lot of work * didn’t have AI guys.
What I Learned (So You Don’t Have To)
After all this trial and error, here’s the big takeaway:
If you’re serious about counting people in a place like a shopping mall, you need something that’s built for the job. That Time-of-Flight sensor was a game-changer for us, it has a higher accuracy. It give you information for better decisions.
I am still searching for the best solutions, and testing. But right now, I think it’s good enough for us.