Okay, so I’ve been messing around with this idea of tracking how many people are in a mall or store at any given time. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while, and I finally decided to just dive in and see what I could come up with.
Getting Started
First, I needed to figure out how to actually count people. I mean, I couldn’t just stand there with a clicker, right? So, I started looking into different sensor options. I thought about cameras, but that felt a little too “Big Brother” for me, plus, processing all that video seemed like a headache.
Then, I stumbled upon these thermal sensors. They basically detect heat signatures, so they can tell if a person is there without actually seeing them. Seemed like a good balance of accuracy and privacy.
Setting Things Up
I got my hands on a few of these thermal sensors and started experimenting. I used a Raspberry Pi – because, let’s be honest, what can’t you do with a Raspberry Pi? – to read the data from the sensors. The initial setup was pretty straightforward. I mean wired them up, installed some basic libraries, and wrote a little Python script to grab the readings.
Of course, it wasn’t that simple. I did some tests walking back and forth in front of the sensor. The raw data was just a bunch of numbers, so I had to write some more code to interpret that and actually count “people” going in and out. It took a bit of tweaking to get the sensitivity right. If people are too close, get ready to headache!
Making it Useful
Once I had the basic counting working, I needed a way to actually see the data. I didn’t want to just stare at a terminal window all day! So, I set up a simple web interface. I used Flask – another Python thing, super easy for making web apps – to display the current count and some basic historical data. I’m no web designer, so it’s pretty basic, but it gets the job done.
I added the current time on it. So you can know how many people in a certain period.
Real-World Testing (Sort Of)
I don’t exactly have a mall to test this in, so I set it up in my hallway. It’s not exactly high-traffic, but it let me see how it worked with people (and my cat) moving around. I can see the people number going up and down. It is working!
What’s Next?
This is still very much a work in progress.
- Better Accuracy: I need to do more testing to make sure it’s counting accurately, especially in crowded situations.
- Better Interface: The web interface needs some serious work. I’d like to add graphs and maybe even alerts.
- Power Consumption:Right now it needs power on all the time. If it can use battery, then it will be much better.
But, hey, it’s a start! It’s been a fun little project, and it’s definitely taught me a lot about sensors, data processing, and just generally making things work. Maybe someday I’ll actually get to try it out in a real store, but for now, my hallway will have to do.