How many people are in the buidling?
We are just in the process of rolling out a solution to one of our many University customers in response to creating a safe campus and making data available about building occupancy in order to respond better to events such as the COVID19 pandemic of 2020, as well as being able to make better informed decisions about estate planning.
Several highlighted shared space and multi-use buildings have been identified for an initial phase to benefit from the automatic counting of building occupancy, replacing a manual process. Physical passage passing counting technology will eventually be combined with WiFi Device data to build a coherent picture of how many individuals are within a building or space, as well as understanding how they move about a space.
We are providing sensors in conjunction with the existing Aruba wireless network which provides a backhaul to gather and forward all sensor data onto a cloud-based service for a combined view of the data gathered.
Bi-Directional Passage Counters
We are installing 450+ passage counter devices which have the following features:
- Battery Operated, speeding up installation time as no external power source is required (approx. 1 year battery life)
- Bi-Directional Horizontal Counting by using 2 infrared beams
- No personal data recorded, so free from GDPR issues
USB Receiver and Gateway
The USB dongle transceiver and gateway replaces the need for physically separate network gateway devices. It plugs directly into the USB port on 300 and 500 series Aruba access points and allows for the communication with sensors in range over a license free RF spectrum of 868MHz. The dongle then encrypts the data in a VPN and uses the wired Aruba access point as a backhaul for the data. Because the 868MHz signal travels and propagates further than standard WiFi, it is not necessary to install a gateway into every Aruba access point. We are installing approximately 145 USB gateways for this solution.
Cloud Based Data Collection & Dashboard
The cloud-based software service ingests all the sensor data which is sent over a secure VPN to the cloud service and presented in an easy to understand dashboard.
In time the platform can ingest data from all manner of additional sensors including temperature & humidity. The data can be presented to other platforms and services through open API architecture so that it can be combined with other sources, as necessary including Qolcom Vision.