EvolvePlus Blog

In today's dynamic property market, display homes go from being mere showcases to becoming vital sources of buyer engagement data. An important technology making a big impact is the EvolvePlus people counter solution.

Decoding Foot Traffic: What Are People Counter Sensors?

The EvolvePlus people counter sensors are sophisticated devices designed to meticulously record the number of individuals entering and exiting a display home. Employing technologies such as wireless infrared, time-of-flight and stereo vision, these sensors deliver precise, real-time foot traffic data while ensuring visitor privacy.

The Strategic Advantage: Why Display Homes Benefit

Implementing people counters offers a multitude of benefits for developers and sales teams:

Gain insights into your foot traffic with our new video overview of the EvolvePlus ePortal Cloud Dashboard.  This centralised web portal allows you to analyse people-counting data from multiple locations across various time intervals with secure, role-based access.

EvolvePlus offers a range of accurate indoor and outdoor people-counting solutions, including overhead sensors with advanced analytics and wireless infrared sensors for easy setup.  The ePortal Cloud Dashboard provides a unified reporting platform for all your sensors.

For organisations seeking to install people counter sensors on a 4G mobile network rather than their corporate network, or for those placing footfall sensors at offsite locations with only power and 4G coverage, EvolvePlus offers people counters with integrated 4G mobile broadband connectivity.

Our 4G-enabled people counters include:

• Battery-Powered Wireless Solution: This features a sensor gateway with integrated 4G and is available in both indoor and outdoor models.
• Overhead ToF (Time of Flight) Counter: Equipped with onboard 4G and IP65 protection, this model is suitable for indoor and sheltered outdoor environments.

These counters are easy to implement in various settings, from retail stores to public libraries, public toilets to park entrances, ensuring reliable performance wherever needed through 4G connectivity.

EvolvePlus offers an easy-to-install USB and wireless people counter solutions. It combines battery-powered people counter sensors with the choice of our Australian-developed cloud portal or the IMMOTION on-premise software for data-driven analysis via dashboards and reports.

The on-premise software is available to customers to install on their own Windows servers or desktops.

Version 1.1.4 of the IMMOTION software is now available, and will upgrade an existing IMMOTION v1.0.3 installation to the latest version.

In the rapidly evolving landscape of retail, office facilities, and public spaces, our Overhead 3D People Counter solution provides highly accurate people counting in a range of buildings, including shopping centres, retail stores, art galleries, public libraries, leisure centres, office buildings, government facilities and transport hubs. They play a pivotal role in gathering valuable data to optimise operations, enhance customer experiences, and make informed decisions.

Our Overhead 3D People Counter solution is now available with optional WiFi Connectivity. The wireless connectivity allows for easy installation and setup. By connecting to your building's WiFi, there is no need for complicated wiring or infrastructure. The advantage is particularly beneficial in environments where aesthetics and convenience are crucial, allowing organisations to set up counters without disrupting the existing infrastructure.

EvolvePlus offers two different models of battery-powered Outdoor People Counters that provide detailed hourly/daily analytics:

• USB People Counter with onboard memory
• Wireless People Counter - with automated data transfer via 4G or local network

Both models are ideal for environments such as footpaths, walking tracks, public toilets and park entrances, and feature a robust outdoor enclosure designed to withstand the harsh elements.

Which Model is Right for You?

The ePortal API for our EvolvePlus Cloud Dashboard delivers footfall data from our Overhead 3D, Wireless and USB people counters in JSON format. 

The valuable information delivered via the API provides in-depth traffic insight to determine optimal operating hours, staffing requirements and peak visitor times, with organisations able to utilise the data within their own analytics applications such as Microsoft PowerBI and Zoho Analytics. 

With the release of version 1.2, the ePortal API has been enhanced to include support for our latest Wireless LoRaWAN people counters available in horizontal and overhead models. LoRaWAN is a Low Power, Wide Area (LPWA) networking protocol designed to wirelessly connect battery-operated IoT sensors over long distances.

Maintaining clean and hygienic public bathrooms and other building facilities are essential for ensuring the health and safety of visitors. But it can be challenging for facility managers and cleaning staff to keep up with the high traffic and varying usage patterns of these areas. The EvolvePlus people counters can be implemented as an effective tool for optimising cleaning in public restrooms and other facility spaces.

The EvolvePlus people counters detect and count the number of people entering and exiting a designated area. These sensors can be installed in entryways or above doorways of public restrooms to provide valuable insights into the usage. This data can then be used to develop cleaning schedules tailored to each restroom's specific needs.

By analysing the foot traffic data collected by the people counters within the EvolvePlus Cloud Dashboard, facility managers and cleaning contractors can determine the busiest times of the day for the restroom. This information can be used to optimise cleaning schedules, ensuring that the restroom is cleaned at the appropriate intervals to maintain a high level of hygiene. For example, if the data shows that a particular restroom experiences a surge in foot traffic during lunch hours, the cleaning schedule can be adjusted accordingly to ensure that the restroom is cleaned more frequently during this time.

EvolvePlus offers two models of battery-powered wireless people counters, each with its own advantages for different footfall-counting environments. Whilst both models feature the same sensor enclosure with horizontal infrared technology, they offer different data transmission methods, which enables customers to choose the model that best suits their environment.

The Wireless RF (Short Range) People Counter model can transmit count data every few seconds and is ideal for organisations that require live occupancy displays or self-hosted software. It features lights on the sensors to indicate successful data transmission and low battery.

The Gateway (SNG Hub) for the Wireless RF (Short Range) People Counter model needs to be located within 20 metres of the people counter sensors and offer ethernet network connectivity. It includes the reporting software for installation on your own PC/server or the option of the EvolvePlus Cloud Dashboard.

Modern airports are among the busiest places globally requiring continuous crowd monitoring for security and efficiency purposes. There are many challenges that airports face daily, and high people flow is one of the most critical ones. People traffic counters are useful tools for airports to have; the traffic counting technology allows security managers to make informed decisions on streamlining passenger traffic.

The EvolvePlus Wireless People Counters are installed at the expanded security screen point servicing Terminal 3 and Terminal 4 at Melbourne Airport allowing management to make evidence-based decisions. With the ability to compare traffic flow between various periods, management can predict peak travel times and prepare in advance with additional resources and staff.

The EvolvePlus Wireless People Counter Active Infrared / IR beam (also called a ‘break beam’) technology was selected due to the ease of implementation with no significant delays experienced by passengers or detrimental impact on airport operations during installation.

The EvolvePlus LoRaWAN People Counter has been N-Tick approved by NNNCo. The ‘N-Tick Network Approved Programme’ ensures that the EvolvePlus People Counters have been reviewed and validated by NNNco to operate over NNNCo’s telco-grade enterprise LoRaWAN network worldwide.

NNNCo is a 100% IoT telco and one of Australia’s leading LoRaWAN network carriers. Partnering with NNNCo enables councils, government agencies and enterprises to deploy and scale our EvolvePlus IoT footfall traffic sensors and integrate the analytics into their existing IoT platform.

The EvolvePlus LoRaWAN People Counter provides accurate footfall traffic counting for both indoor and outdoor environments. Our LoRaWAN people counting solution solves various traffic monitoring challenges for all types of environments, including libraries, galleries, public toilets, office buildings, retail stores, shopping centres, park entrances, council facilities, meeting rooms, leisure centres, and pedestrian paths. The battery-powered people counters are bi-directional and will count both ‘In’ and ‘Out’ directions with wireless data connectivity to LoRaWAN gateways.

‘Footfall’ is a time-series statistic that is used to measure the number of people is received within in a specific location and a given timeframe.

Aggregated footfall data is used to compare the popularity of each point of installation; historical data can be gathered and stored over time and can be used to monitor an increase or decrease in visitors.

Footfall counters are automatic, sensing technology-based approaches for quantifying footfall statistics. This technology is also often referred to as ‘people counters’ or ‘pedestrian counters’

The EvolvePlus ePortal web application provides data-driven analysis with dashboards and reports across people counter data from Overhead 3D, Wireless, USB and LoRaWAN people counters across specified date and time periods. This valuable information reveals in-depth traffic insight to determine optimal operating hours, staffing requirements and peak visitor times.

Our latest API for ePortal application is a RESTful API service to deliver EvolvePlus Overhead 3D and Infrared footfall data from the EvolvePlus Cloud Service in JSON format.

It enables customers to visualise count data from the EvolvePlus people counters into their own analytics applications such as Zoho Analytics and Microsoft PowerBI. Use your business intelligence dashboard to gain a richer insight by combining data from multiple sources into a centralised view, including sales results, financial statements, library statistics, event sales and people traffic counts.,  

For enhanced people counter analysis of visitor and customer numbers our Overhead 3D People Counter sensors can provide separate footfall statistics for Adults & Children.  

The onboard Artificial Intelligence (AI) detects the height of each person and counts as either an Adult or Child based on the height. You can configure the sensor with the height that you wish to use to differentiate each detected person as an Adult or Child.

The result is a more detailed analysis of customers and visitors, which is displayed via reports and charts within the EvolvePlus Dashboard.

In our January 2021 article we described how our Overhead 3D People Counter solution can identify employees and exclude them from the footfall traffic counts. This provides greater accuracy of people counter analysis for sales conversion ratios, visitor numbers, etc. 

Whilst our Wireless and USB Infrared People Counters do not support using specially designed name tags to exclude staff from statistics, our EvolvePlus Reporting & Analytics platform does provide a daily statistics report to display total footfall traffic counts and an adjusted total based on your own calculated staff ratio.

For more information on accessing the Daily People Counter Reduced By Staff Ratio Report contact EvolvePlus.

EvolvePlus is pleased to announce updates to its LoRaWAN People Counter, which includes support for the AS923 band. The advantage of the LoRaWAN AS923 band is that it is being widely used for IoT devices across both Australia and New Zealand, and more broadly supported by LoRaWAN network operators and gateways.

Our battery-powered LoRaWAN People Counting solution enables organisations to easily count people at both indoor and outdoor entrances that may be located hundreds of metres from the nearest mains power source and have the data automatically transmitted to an online cloud platform for analysis and reporting.

Some of the facilities where the battery-powered People Counter sensors can be implemented include parks, footpaths, sporting facilities, public toilets, cemeteries, information centres and more. Organisations can choose to push the data to either the EvolvePlus Reporting & Analytics platform or to their own reporting platform being used for other IoT projects.

We have recently published a new video overview of the EvolvePlus Overhead 3D People Counter solution. It shows how the solution counts footfall traffic in different directions whilst using the onboard Artificial Intelligence (AI) to detect adults & children (based on height range), exclude staff from counts and provide gender statistics.

Also highlighted in the video is the EvolvePlus Dashboard & Analytics platform, which delivers interactive web-based charts, dashboards and reports that can be exported in a variety of formats including Excel, CSV and Word.

The challenge faced by many organisations is how to effectively count people at entrances and facilities that may be located hundreds of metres from the nearest mains power source and have the data automatically transmitted to an online cloud platform for analysis and reporting.

Our LoRaWAN People Counting solution solves this challenge by installing battery powered People Counter sensors at the remote locations (e.g. parks, sporting grounds, public toilets, footpaths, buildings, libraries, visitor centres and leisure complexes) and automatically transmitting the footfall traffic data to a LoRaWAN gateway that is located hundreds of metres away from the entrance (and in some cases a few kilometres away with a high powered base station and long range antennas).

The counting principle is based on the interruption of a horizontal infrared beam from the Transmitter causing the LoRaWAN Receiver to record incremental counts. When the outer edge of the wide horizontal infrared beam is interrupted in either direction, e.g. by a person, car, bike, pram etc. the LoRaWAN Receiver detects this disruption and will send this information to the LoRaWAN Gateway. The allowable max distance between the Transmitter and LoRaWAN Receiver is up to 8 metres.

EvolvePlus have a range of outdoor people counters featuring secure, robust casing, ideal for environments such as public toilets, park entrances, festivals, footpaths and more.

The outdoor casing is moulded from the finest commercial grade plastic and designed to withstand the harsh outdoor elements whilst providing superior security for the battery powered people counter sensors. There are two different types of robust outdoor casing available:

• With black front cover to suit entrances up to 3 metres wide
• With clear front cover to suit entrances up to 5 metres wide

The people counter models available with the robust outdoor casing are:

Our ePortal web application enables insights of people counter movements via dashboards and analysis reporting across our various traffic counter sensors including Wireless, LoRaWAN, USB, Overhead Thermal and Overhead 3D with AI.

The ePortal module is available for Cloud editions of our People Counter solution, with version 3 featuring new interactive charts and monitoring of the sensor status.