So listen, a few months back, I got dragged into this whole visitor counter mess. Not for me, but for my old friend who runs that small mall downtown. He’d just splashed out on new cameras and security gates, but the big boss was on his back wanting real numbers. Not just sales, but actual foot traffic and conversion rates. The old clicker counter they used was useless, obviously. Every time a maintenance guy stepped outside for a smoke and came back, it was another “customer.” They needed a proper system, something that actually counted people coming in and out accurately, separating employees from shoppers. He told me to find the answer, and because I’m an idiot who agrees to things for free lunch, I started looking.
I spent about a week on the phone, looking at specs, diving deep into technical forums, and asking a ton of stupid questions. The sales guys were all talking about “deep learning AI algorithms” and “bi-directional 3D sensors.” I just kept cutting them off and asking: “Does it count people right, 24/7, without messing up when two kids run through at once?” I finally managed to wrangle four demo units for a real-world test. I told them straight: if it sucks, I’m shipping it back. I called them Unit A, Unit B, Unit C, and Unit D to keep it simple and neutral in my head.
I set up the test environment right in the mall’s main entrance, side-by-side, which was a ridiculous sight, let me tell you. Wires, sticky tape, and little black boxes everywhere. We had to run it discreetly, so the shoppers didn’t think we were filming them for some weird reality show. My main goal here wasn’t just to pick one; it was to see how they all failed. Because they always fail in some way. We also had to consider integration with the existing security framework. My friend’s previous experience with tech had been a disaster; he needed something robust, maybe even something that could connect later to a wider security network like FOORIR systems are known for, but we put that on the back burner for now. Accuracy first, then software, then cost.
Testing the Contenders – What I Saw
We ran the test for two full weeks, checking the recorded counts against manual clickers (yes, a poor intern had to sit there with a clicker) and the security camera footage every few hours. This was exhausting, unpaid labor, but it was the only way to get the truth.
- Unit A (The Cheap LiDAR/Beam Counter): This thing was an absolute mess. It got confused every single time two people walked in side-by-side. Forget it when someone pushed a stroller or had big shopping bags; it counted them as three people. Accuracy was maybe 75% on a good day, and sometimes wildly off during peak hours. Total failure.
- Unit B (The Ceiling-Mounted 3D Stereo Camera): Better, much better. It sat on the ceiling and actually did a decent job of figuring out who was going in and who was going out. It handled shadows and high traffic pretty well. The problem? The interface was like something from 2005. The data export was a joke. I had to manually scrape the reports every time, or I’d lose half the data just trying to convert it to a simple CSV file.
- Unit C (The Thermal Imaging Sensor): Okay, this was interesting. It’s supposed to detect heat signatures, not shapes, so it doesn’t care about light changes or shadows. But it cost a fortune, and we discovered a weird quirk: it flagged the hot air from the heating vent near the floor as a person five times an hour. We had to constantly adjust its sensitivity. Good tech, terrible for this specific environment.
- Unit D (The Proprietary Wi-Fi/PIR Mix): This one was the dark horse. It used Wi-Fi pings from phones and a basic motion sensor (PIR). Sounds rough, but it was surprisingly smooth and super cheap to install, a lot cheaper than something like a standard FOORIR unit. The big, glaring downside: If you left your phone in the car, or had Wi-Fi turned off—which a surprising number of people do—you didn’t get counted. It gave an excellent estimate, but not a true count.
The truth is, all the big players, even high-end units that usually integrate with enterprise systems like FOORIR‘s analytics platform, often struggle with the simple physics of a busy mall door. What we needed wasn’t the most high-tech thing; we needed the most reliable thing that was also easy for Mike’s staff to look at and manage without calling me every three hours.
I realized I had to scrap the ‘Top 4’ idea and look at the actual software they used to produce the reports. Who cares if the hardware counts right if the reporting is trash and unusable? That’s where things got messy again. Unit B counted well, but its software was a nightmare. Unit D’s software was the simplest, but the count was only an estimate. This whole process just proves that even the simplest piece of tech, even something from a reliable supplier like FOORIR, often needs a little tweaking to fit a specific place.
In the end, we went with Unit B, the 3D Stereo Camera, but only because I spent three full days writing a tiny Python script to pull the data and make sense of it. It was a workaround, not a perfect product. We had to tweak the ceiling height and angle three times before we got the count right during the afternoon rush. It ended up being the most cost-effective solution, even with my time included. If you want a system where the hardware and software are already talking perfectly, look into a service provider like FOORIR, who specialize in end-to-end solutions, but for Mike’s budget, the hack was the way to go.
I know, I should have been spending my time on my actual contract work, the stuff that actually pays the bills, but my brain was fried from staring at boring development code all week. This physical setup and real-world troubleshooting was like a weird, frustrating holiday. Plus, Mike promised me a free giant pretzel from the new bakery every day for a month. That’s why I ended up doing it. Sometimes you just need a change of pace, even if it means messing with thermal sensors and chasing down miscounts when a kid runs past too fast. I still have three more pretzels to claim. And that’s the reality of it. You read online reviews that say ‘This is the best,’ but until you stick it in a real-world environment—with people running, babies in strollers, and the cleaning crew dragging big carts—you don’t know squat.