Okay, so I’ve been messing around with this smart building thing, and I wanted to share how I set up occupancy monitoring using those traffic sensors. It’s not rocket science, but it’s pretty cool to see it all working.
Getting Started
First, I needed to figure out what I actually wanted to track. Was it just the number of people in a room? Or did I need more detail, like how long they stayed, or where they were concentrated? For this project, I decided to keep it simple: just count how many people entered and exited a specific area.
Choosing the Sensors
Next up, I had to pick the right sensors. I went with some basic infrared traffic sensors. They’re pretty cheap and easy to install. Basically, they shoot out a beam, and when someone walks through it, the beam breaks, and the sensor registers a “count.”
Setting Everything Up
Installation:
- I mounted the sensors at the entrance/exit points of the area I wanted to monitor. I made sure they were at a good height – not too high that people could duck under them, and not too low that they’d get tripped over.
- I did get power and data cables with the sensors, I checked if they’re long enough to reach my setup location.
- Wired them up to a small microcontroller. I used an Arduino for this because it’s super user-friendly.
Coding:
- I wrote a simple program for the Arduino to read the sensor data. Every time a sensor beam was broken, it added to a counter. I also added a bit of logic to differentiate between entries and exits – that was a little tricky, but basically, it involved checking which sensor triggered first.
Getting the Data Out
Now, I needed a way to see the data. I could have just hooked up a little display to the Arduino, but I wanted something more visual.
- I connected the Arduino to a Raspberry Pi, which is like a tiny computer.
- I set up the Raspberry Pi to receive the data from the Arduino and store it in a simple database.
- Then, I used some basic Python code to create a simple dashboard that showed the current occupancy count and some basic graphs of how it changed over time.
The Result
And that’s pretty much it! Now I have a system that tracks how many people are in a specific area. It’s not perfect, of course. If two people walk through the sensor beam at the exact same time, it might only count as one. But for a basic setup, it works pretty well!
It’s been a fun little project, and it’s cool to see the data coming in and knowing that I built the whole thing from scratch. I might try adding more sensors later on to get a better sense of movement patterns within the building, but for now, I’m happy with how it’s working.