Inspiration
Our team wanted to create a method to reduce the hassle of having to accurately count the number of people entering and leaving a building. This problem has become increasingly important in the midst of COVID-19 when there are strict capacity limits indoors.
What it does
The device acts as a bidirectional customer counter that senses the direction of movement in front of an ultrasonic sensor, records this information, and displays it on a screen as well as through python and email notifications. When a person walks in (right to left), the devices increases the count of number of customers who have entered from the door. In the opposite direction (customers exiting), the count decreases therefore giving the true value of how many people are inside. We also have capacity thresholds, for example, if the capacity is 20, then at 15 customers, there will be an email notification warning that you are approaching capacity. Then another notification once you reach capacity.
How we built it
We developed the device using an Arduino, breadboard, potentiometer, ultrasonic sensor, and LCD screen as well as using python through serial communication. The ultrasonic sensor had two sides, the first recorded the amount of people passing by it in one direction and incremented, while the second recorded the number of people moving in the other direction and decremented. This sensor was connected to the LCD screen and Arduino, which was connected to a potentiometer on a breadboard.
Challenges we ran into
One of the main challenges we ran into was fine tuning the sensor to ensure accurate readings were produced. This is especially difficult when using an ultrasonic sensor as they are very sensitive and can easily read false data. We also were unable to run the the send_sms python script on of our partner's computer (the one with the device we developed) due to conflicts with environment variables. Therefore, we switched from SMS notifications to email notifications for the purpose of project showcase.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are very proud of our final device which was able to successfully sense and count movement in different directions and display these findings on the screen. It also uses raw input data and sends the corresponding email notifications to the user.
What we learned
One thing our team learned throughout the course of this project was how to send notifications from python to a phone through SMS. Through the use of Twilio's web API and Twilio Python helper library, we installed our dependency and were able to send SMS using Python.
What's next for In Through the Out Door
We would like to make our model more compact with a custom PCB and casting. We would also like to work on including an ESP32 wireless microchip with full TCP/IP stack and microcontroller capabilities to integrate Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on the device. We will integrate using Python to send notifications to the user through a mobile application.
Smart City Automation && Smartest Unsmart Hack
Our project qualifies for smart city automation, as it can be used as a system for many storeowners, who want a feasible solution that can count their store capacity and notify them as per COVID protocols that they are going over capacity. Our project also qualifies for smartest unsmart hack because our hack does not require any advanced learning frameworks or machine learning to achieve it's purpose. It uses Arduino and simple Python calling to count the capacity.
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