People Counter with LoRaWAN - The Overview
The need for solutions to monitor visitor flows and crowds has increased significantly in recent months. Many areas of our society, such as restaurants and cultural venues, have already been opened or will soon resume operations. However, the requirements are sometimes difficult to implement and additional personnel for entrance controls are cost-intensive. The LoRaWAN solution can help, and it can even do so without collecting the visitors' personal data. There are various solutions with different focuses and since the use cases are also diverse, we have taken a closer look at three sensors.
Solution with focus on infrared light barrier
IM Buildings IR sensor
The People Counter from IMBuildings creates an infrared barrier that directionally detects people. The optimal use for this two-part sensor is mounting on a door at about 100cm height. The sensor is battery operated, so no wiring is required. Especially for stores or individual rooms this can be a very good solution to ensure that not too many people are in one area.
Easy to integrate
People flows are poorly captured
Directional counting is performed
Only interior available
Freely configurable whether the transmission by time unit or event-driven is triggered
Vandalism at risk
Solution with focus on frequency determination
to the Kerlink Wanesy Wave
The Wanesy Wave from Kerlink counts existing wifi devices as well as BLE devices and sends the collected information via LoRaWAN. Since devices that have been added and disappeared are counted every 15min, it can also determine which devices have been in one place for longer than 10min. It scans, counts and demarcates into zones to show how many people are in an area. Clear plus point is the protected privacy, because only devices are counted and the area that is scanned, is relatively large.
Easy to integrate
Values allow only few conclusions to be drawn about movements of persons
No special set-up requirements
People with multiple devices are counted multiple times
High privacy through tracking of mobile devices instead of people
Devices that are switched off or people without a mobile device are not counted
Solution with focus on radar cone
CRS Parametric Radar People Counter
The Radar People Counter from Parametric, much like a camera, has a specific angle at which people are detected. In this square pyramid, the sensor can count bidirectional movements and therefore enables directional detection.
Sensor is easy to integrate
The set-up and alignment is decisive for optimum values
In narrow space very high accuracy
Persons who are not within the area are not counted
Indoor and outdoor available
There must be no constantly moving objects such as an elevator in the measurement area
