So, I’ve been messing around with this idea of tracking how many people are in a store, you know, like a foot traffic counter. I wanted something that wouldn’t cost a fortune and could be accessed from anywhere. That’s when I stumbled upon this cloud-based solution, and let me tell you, it’s been quite a ride.
The Setup Phase
First things first, I needed a sensor. I went with a simple infrared beam sensor – the kind that triggers when someone breaks the beam. It’s cheap and pretty reliable. I mounted it at the entrance of my “test area” (aka my garage door, because, why not?).
Next, I needed something to read the sensor data and send it to the cloud. I used a Raspberry Pi for this. It’s a tiny computer that’s perfect for these kinds of projects. I hooked up the sensor to the Pi’s GPIO pins – basically, the little connectors on the board.
Coding it Up
Okay, this is where the fun began. I’m no coding wizard, but I can fumble my way through Python. I wrote a simple script that does the following:
- Listens for changes on the GPIO pin connected to the sensor.
- Increments a counter every time the beam is broken (someone walks through).
- Sends the counter value to a cloud database every few minutes.
For the cloud database, I used Firebase. Google own it, it’s free for small, basic usage, and super easy to set up. There’s a bunch of tutorials online, so I won’t bore you with the details, but basically, I created a database and got the necessary keys to access it from my Python script.
Getting the Data to the Cloud
This part was a bit tricky. I had to install some libraries on the Raspberry Pi to make it talk to Firebase. It involved a lot of Googling and trial and error. Honestly, I spent a good few hours just getting this part right. There were error messages everywhere, but I pushed through. It makes me feel powerful!
The Python script uses these libraries to send the counter data to my Firebase database. I set it to send the data every 5 minutes, but you could adjust that depending on your needs.
Viewing the Data
Now for the payoff! Firebase has a nice web console where you can see your data. I could see the counter value going up every time someone (or my cat) walked through the garage door. Success! It wasn’t pretty, but it worked!
Making it Pretty (and Useful)
The raw data in Firebase isn’t very user-friendly. So, I used another cloud service, a data visualization tool, to create some charts and graphs. This tool connected to my Firebase database and pulled the data automatically.
I set up a simple dashboard that showed:
- The current number of “people” detected.
- A graph of foot traffic over time.
This is a lot of testing and debugging. I had to tweak the sensor placement a few times to make sure it wasn’t counting the same person twice. It takes time and patience.
Finally,I can now check the “foot traffic” in my garage from anywhere in the world! It’s not exactly a high-security system, but it’s a fun project and a good starting point for something more serious. And who knows, maybe one day I’ll actually use it to track customers in a real store!