Okay, here’s my blog post about tracking customer traffic in supermarkets, written in a casual, personal style, using basic HTML tags:
Alright, so the other day my boss comes up to me and says, “We need to figure out how many people are actually in the store at any given time.” Apparently, corporate wants to optimize staffing, you know, make sure we have enough cashiers and shelf-stockers when it’s busy, and not too many when it’s dead. Sounds reasonable, right? Except… how do we actually do that?
My first thought was, “Okay, we have security cameras, right?” So I started digging into that. I spent a good few hours watching security footage, trying to manually count people coming in and out. Let me tell you, that was a nightmare. People were moving too fast, sometimes they’d go in groups, sometimes they’d walk in and then right back out… my head was spinning. I quickly realized this wasn’t going to work. It was like trying to count grains of sand on a beach.
Trying out some tech
Next, I started looking into some actual tech solutions. I mean, there had to be something better than me squinting at blurry video feeds. I found a few options:
- Infrared Beams: These are like those little laser beams you see at the entrance of some stores. They count every time the beam is broken. Simple, cheap, but… not super accurate. If two people walk in side-by-side, it only counts as one.
- Thermal Cameras: These detect body heat. A bit more advanced, but still had some issues. What if someone is wearing a really thick coat? Or what about on a super hot day?
- WiFi Tracking: This uses people’s smartphones. Basically, it tracks the unique MAC address of each device that connects to the store’s WiFi. Seemed promising, but… what about people who don’t connect to the WiFi? Or people with multiple devices?
I spent a couple of days researching each of these. I even called a few companies to get quotes. The infrared beams were definitely the cheapest, but I was worried about the accuracy. The thermal cameras seemed better, but the cost was significantly higher. The WiFi tracking… well, it felt a little creepy, to be honest. And I wasn’t sure how accurate it would be.
The “Aha!” Moment
I have found a good counting camera that can slove the accuracy problem. It equiped some AI technology to analysis the video I think. It looks like this:
And this is what the software looks like:
So, after a bit more digging, I stumbled upon these “people counting cameras”. Apparently, they use some fancy computer vision algorithms, and can accurately count people even in crowded situations. I was intrigued. I found a vendor, and they sent me a demo unit to test out.
I spent a day setting it up, and to use it, I need to connect to my computer, I have to get it connect to the Internet.
After a few hiccups (turns out I had plugged the Ethernet cable into the wrong port… whoops!), I got it working. And… it was pretty amazing! It really did seem to accurately count people, even when they were walking in groups or moving quickly.
Conclusion and my result
I presented my findings to my boss, and he was impressed. We decided to go with the people counting cameras, and we’re now in the process of installing them in all our stores. It’s been a bit of a learning curve, but it’s definitely a much better solution than me trying to count people manually! And hopefully, it’ll help us make sure we have the right number of staff at the right time, which should make things better for both our employees and our customers. Win-win!