It seems like it is a device sensing the existence of wifi or Bluetooth device in the area. I do currently have the capacity to get number of device association via building’s wifi access points as I assume student’s phone is most likely already configure to connect to college’s wifi network. I will be looking more into entry/exit sensor for a more precise head count.
Thanks Kun From: Monica Maceli Sent: Thursday, July 9, 2020 10:39 AM To: CODE4LIB@LISTS.CLIR.ORG Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Anyone attempted to use Raspberry Pi w/camera tomonitor building capacity? I found the example I mentioned in case anyone is interested in the future, turns out it was a UCSD student project that they have now turned into a company - https://waitz.io/ Currently, it looks like it is used in McGill and UCSD libraries and maybe others? They have done some product development on it, but under the hood each device is just a raspberry pi, I believe. They have a fancier algorithm for getting more accuracy, but I am just doing basic counting/deduping of any bluetooth-enabled devices in range of the Pi and then dumping the address data and just retaining the count for privacy purposes. So just using the onboard bluetooth chip with the pybluez python library, no additional sensors necessary, can scan the environment and tell you there are X number of devices in range with bluetooth on. Run and observed repeatedly you can then get a sense of the space's baseline and changes over time. To do entrance/exit detection external sensors are needed (wired to a Pi or Arduino), e.g. using PIR motion sensor or ultrasonic range sensor similar to the approach in the article Tom posted -> https://journal.code4lib.org/articles/12947 This is very straightforward if there is a dedicated entrance and exit. If it's bi-directional foot traffic you'd need a set of sensors to determine direction, e.g. in a meeting room to be able to say there have been 10 entrances and 5 exits so let's assume about 5 people inside. You could also get very fine-grained and use pressure sensors on each seat to tell if it's occupied or not (places like We Work do this). Kun - if you'd like to discuss further feel free to email me directly my contact info is in my signature, always happy to talk about sensor stuff! Best, Monica Maceli, Ph.D. Associate Professor Pratt Institute | School of Information 144 W 14th St, 6th Floor, New York, NY, 10011-7301 www.monicamaceli.com | mmac...@pratt.edu On Thu, Jul 9, 2020 at 12:32 PM Kun Lin <l...@whitman.edu> wrote: > Hi Monica > Could you let me know what kind of sensor you are using? The bluetooth > scanner, are you referring to scanning for bluetooth device or it's a > bluetooth connection to your computer? > > Thanks > Kun > > On Thu, Jul 9, 2020 at 7:54 AM Monica Maceli <mmac...@pratt.edu> wrote: > > > Hi all, > > > > I have been experimenting with entrance/exit sensors (pir and/or > > ultrasonic) combined with a Bluetooth scanner running on Pis to calculate > > relative space crowdedness for our campus. Data is sent over wifi via > MQTT > > to a cloud Influxdb database w/ Grafana for data dashboard and alerting. > I > > don't have published code currently but I'd be happy to share and work > with > > others on this. > > > > I too felt that the cameras, while doable and probably more accurate, > would > > introduce too many privacy concerns. > > > > I got the Bluetooth idea from a project I heard about awhile ago, but I > > can't remember the original creator (I think a librarian had these placed > > in a library and a Redditor found a Pi and posted a "what is this thing?" > > post). Does this ring any bells? > > > > Best, > > > > Monica Maceli, Ph.D. > > Associate Professor > > Pratt Institute | School of Information > > 144 W 14th St, 6th Floor, New York, NY, 10011-7301 > > www.monicamaceli.com | mmac...@pratt.edu > > > > > > On Wed, Jul 8, 2020 at 8:57 PM Tom Keays <tomke...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > > There was this write up from 2017 in the C4L Journal. Not cameras, but > > > other kinds of sensors that didn't trigger any privacy concerns. > > > > > > https://journal.code4lib.org/articles/12947 > > > > > > On Wed, Jul 8, 2020 at 1:20 PM Goben, Abigail H <ago...@uic.edu> > wrote: > > > > > > > I think Griffey did > > http://jasongriffey.net/mtf/homepage/feed/index.html > > > > > > > > > > > > -- > > > > Abigail H. Goben, MLS > > > > ago...@uic.edu > > > > > > > > -----Original Message----- > > > > From: Code for Libraries <CODE4LIB@LISTS.CLIR.ORG> On Behalf Of Kun > > Lin > > > > Sent: Wednesday, July 8, 2020 12:02 PM > > > > To: CODE4LIB@LISTS.CLIR.ORG > > > > Subject: [CODE4LIB] Anyone attempted to use Raspberry Pi w/camera to > > > > monitor building capacity? > > > > > > > > Anyone attempted to use Raspberry Pi w/camera to monitor building > > > > capacity? Any good resources on how to do that? > > > > Thanks > > > > Kun > > > > > > > > > >