Okay, so I’ve been messing around with this idea for a while – a people-counting system, you know, for supermarkets and grocery stores. It’s kinda cool, and I figured I’d share how I went about it, bumps and all.
Getting Started – The Idea
First off, I needed to figure out the basic setup. I mean, where do you even start? I thought about cameras, obviously, since you need to “see” people. I’m no expert in fancy tech, so I went with what I know – regular webcams. I figured one at each entrance/exit would do the trick.
Setting Up the Hardware (Mostly Fumbling Around)
Next, I grabbed a couple of old webcams I had lying around. Hooked ’em up to my trusty old computer. Nothing fancy, just a regular desktop. I spent a good chunk of time just making sure the cameras were actually working and pointing in the right direction. I ended up using some tape and cardboard to get them positioned just right – real high-tech stuff, I know!
The Software – My Playground
Now, this is where it gets interesting (and where I spent most of my time pulling my hair out). I needed some software to, well, count people. After looking around and trying a few things, I ended up working with this thing called OpenCV. Seemed like everyone was using it for this kind of stuff.
Coding – Trial and Error (Lots of Error)
- Detecting Motion: I started simple. I wanted the software to, at the very least, detect when something was moving. This took a bit of fiddling, but I got it working. Basically, the camera looks for changes in the video feed. If something changes (like a person walking by), the software notices.
- Trying to Identify People: Okay, this is where it got tough. Telling the difference between a person and, say, a shopping cart? Not as easy as it sounds. I messed around with some pre-trained models. The code looks for shapes and patterns that match what it thinks a person looks like.
- Counting: I thought this would be the easy part. Nope. I had to figure out how to track people as they moved across the camera’s view. I used these things called “bounding boxes” – basically, little rectangles that the software draws around each person. Then, I tried to make sure I only counted each person once, even if they moved around a bit.
Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3…
I spent days just walking back and forth in front of the cameras, trying to see if the count was right. It wasn’t, at first. Not even close. Sometimes it would count me twice, sometimes it wouldn’t count me at all. My cat, Mittens, also got counted a few times, which was pretty funny. Eventually, after a lot of tweaking, I got it to be somewhat accurate. Not perfect, but good enough for a home project, I guess.
The End Result (for Now)
So, what did I end up with? A pretty basic, but working, people-counting system. It’s not gonna win any awards, but it does a decent job of keeping track of how many people are entering and exiting. The numbers show up on my computer screen. I’m thinking about making it save the data somewhere, maybe a simple text file, so I can look at it later. Still got some kinks to work out, but hey, that’s part of the fun, right?
It’s by no means perfect, or even close to some professional systems, but its a start.