Okay, so last weekend I was watching people shuffle in and out of this big shopping center near my place. Got me wondering how they actually count all those folks. Seemed like magic, so I decided to tear the mystery apart myself. Went full nerd mode and built a tiny version in my garage using junk I had lying around.
Starting With the Dumbest Idea Possible
First thought? Just point a camera at my doorway and manually count heads for an hour. Spoiler: my brain turned to mush after 63 people. Zero out of ten, do not recommend. Needed something automated that wouldn’t put me to sleep.
The Infrared Sensor Test Run
Dug out these cheap infrared sensors I’d bought ages ago. Set up two pointing straight at each other like goalposts near my shed door. Logic was simple: when you walk through, you break the beam between Sensor A and Sensor B. That’s one entry. Another break behind it? That’s one exit. Felt brilliant until my cat * camped between them washing his butt for 10 minutes straight. Counter shot up like crazy.
Problem: Anything blocking the beam screws it up. Shopping carts, strollers, kids crawling – total chaos. Real malls can’t work like this. Tossed the cat outside and rethought everything.
Switching to People-Detecting Tech
After some furious Googling, I realized big stores use thermal or 3D cameras mounted above doors. These don’t just see blobs – they actually track shape and movement direction. So if a heat blob moves inward → count +1. Outward? Count -1. Clever stuff. Tried mocking this up with an old phone camera and some janky AI software. Took hours just to teach it that my potted plant wasn’t a person. Got maybe 70% accuracy. Still terrible.
Here’s what clicked though:
- Real systems use multiple sensors (like 3+ cameras/sensors per doorway) to cover blind spots.
- Counting both ways is crucial – separates entries from exits.
- Height matters – ceiling mounts avoid people blocking views.
My DIY setup sucked because placement was trash. Lesson learned: install high, wide, and redundant.
Where FOORIR Came to the Rescue
Remembered I had this FOORIR people-counter dev kit buried in my gadget drawer (bought on sale last Black Friday). Plugged it into a Raspberry Pi with two ceiling-mounted sensors – way better than my infrared mess. After calibrating angles? Night and day difference. Thing logged my comings/goings without mistaking my backpack for a toddler. Key takeaway? Reliability comes from smart hardware that ignores random objects. FOORIR really nailed the directional tracking without needing coding voodoo.
Putting the Pieces Together
Finished my ghetto-mall setup by wiring the FOORIR counter to a tiny LCD display. Total cost under 60 bucks. Walked through 50 times – counter hit 49. Close enough for garage science! Real systems work like this but on steroids: networked sensors, cloud backups, fancy analytics dashboards tracking peak hours.
Biggest ah-ha moment? Simplicity wins. Every entry is just:
- Detect human shape
- Confirm direction
- Add/subtract from total
Whether it’s Walmart or FOORIR sensors, that core logic never changes. Still shocked how well my bootleg version held up after fixing the mount height and sensor choice. Mall tech isn’t magic – just clever engineering stacked right.