Okay, here’s my blog post about setting up a foot traffic counter, written in a casual, first-person style:
So, I’ve been messing around with this idea of tracking how many people come and go through a certain area. Think, like, a busy train station or a bus terminal. I wanted to see if I could build something myself, without spending a ton of money, you know, just for fun. Get the data, see the patterns, that kind of nerdy stuff.
Getting Started: The Basic Idea
First, I needed a way to “see” people. My first thought? Cameras! But, honestly, that felt a bit…creepy. Plus, processing video in real-time? That’s a whole other can of worms. I needed something simpler.
Then it hit me: those infrared beam break sensors! You know, the kind they use in some stores to “ding” when you walk in? They’re basically just a transmitter and a receiver. When something breaks the beam, you get a signal. Perfect!
The Hardware: Keeping it Cheap
I grabbed a couple of these cheap IR sensors off some random online store. I didn’t need anything fancy, just something that would reliably detect a “break.” Then, the brains of the operation: a Raspberry Pi. I had one lying around from another project. A Raspberry Pi is basically a tiny, cheap computer, very versatile.
- Infrared Beam Break Sensors (x2): These are the “eyes.”
- Raspberry Pi (any model will do): This is the “brain.”
- Some Jumper Wires: To connect everything together.
- A Breadboard (optional, but helpful): Makes connecting things easier.
- Power Supply for the Pi: Just a regular phone charger works.
Putting It Together: Wiring It Up
Wiring was surprisingly easy. It’s basically just connecting the sensors to the Raspberry Pi’s GPIO pins. These are the little pins on the Pi that you can use to send and receive signals. There are tons of diagrams online if you search, and it really helped me. Seriously, if I can do it, anyone can.
I placed the sensors on either side of a doorway, kind of like those security lasers in spy movies, but, way less cool. Made sure they were aligned, tested them by waving my hand, basic things, you know.
The Code: Making It Count
The coding part was where I spent the most time, I think. I used Python because it’s pretty straightforward. The basic logic is:
- Listen for a signal from the sensors.
- When a sensor’s beam is broken, that will be a signal.
- If the signal from the sensor is broken, increase a counter.
- Store the count somewhere, maybe with a timestamp.
I made it so the code would store the counts in a simple text file. Every time the beam broke, it added a line to the file with the current date and time. Super basic, but it worked!
Testing and Tweaking: Does it actually work?
I set the whole thing up in my hallway, ’cause why not? And…it worked! I could see the counts going up every time someone walked through. I kept tweaking the sensor positions and the code to make it more accurate. The biggest problem was getting the sensors aligned just right so they wouldn’t give false positives. That took some patience.
The Results: What I Learned
After letting it run for a few days, I had a pretty cool little dataset. I could see the “rush hours” in my own house! I graphed it all out, just because I like graphs, but, I’m no data scientist, okay. You can easily see when everyone was leaving for work/school, and when everyone got home. Pretty neat!
This was a fun little project, and it definitely got me thinking about other ways to use these kinds of sensors. Could I use it to track how often my cat uses the litter box? Maybe! The possibilities are endless, really. It’s all about getting creative with simple tools.