Okay, so the other day I got this project, right? The boss wanted to track how many people were coming in and out of the building, in real-time. Basically, he wanted some fancy foot traffic analytics. I’m no expert, but I figured, how hard could it be?
First things first, I needed some hardware. I grabbed a couple of those infrared beam sensors, you know, the kind they use in stores to “ding” when you walk in. I also snagged a Raspberry Pi – those little things are amazing for quick projects.
Setting Up the Sensors
Wiring the sensors to the Pi was a bit of a pain. I’m not gonna lie, I spent a good hour just figuring out which wire went where. Lots of Googling involved. There are tons of tutorials online, but each one seems to do things slightly differently. My advice? Double, triple-check the wiring diagrams before you connect anything!
Once I got the sensors hooked up, I had to position them. This took some trial and error. I put one sensor at the entrance and another just inside. The idea was to get a directional count – people breaking the first beam then the second were counted as “entering,” and vice versa.
The Code
Now for the software side. I’m pretty comfortable with Python, so that’s what I used. The basic logic was simple:
- Monitor the sensors: Keep checking if the infrared beams are broken.
- Track direction: If beam A breaks, then beam B, it’s an entry. If B breaks, then A, it’s an exit.
- Count: Keep a running total of entries and exits.
- Real-time data: Send count to a dashboard.
Initially, I just printed the counts to the console. That worked, but it wasn’t very “real-time analytics,” was it? I needed a way to see the data in a more user-friendly format, and update it live.
Building a Simple Dashboard
I decided to keep things simple for the dashboard. I used a basic web framework (Flask, because it’s easy) to create a webpage that would display the numbers. The Python script on the Pi would send the counts to this webpage every few seconds.
I whipped up a quick HTML page with a couple of big, bold numbers for “Entries” and “Exits.” Nothing fancy, just the raw data. I used some JavaScript to update these numbers with the data received from the Pi.
Putting It All Together
Finally, I got everything running. I set up the Pi to start the script automatically on boot, and opened the dashboard on my computer. And there it was – real-time foot traffic data, ticking up and down as people walked in and out.
The test ran perfect!
It wasn’t perfect, of course. There were a few glitches. Sometimes, if two people walked in really close together, the system would only count one. And I’m sure there are a million ways to improve the accuracy and robustness of the setup.
My Boss loved it.
But hey, it worked! It was a fun little project, and I learned a ton along the way. Now, onto the next challenge…