131–140 of 153 posts
The one thing that really confuses me is the pricing structure. Why do you need to pay each month? Paying $300 for one year of usage seems pretty steep.
It's service pricing but it seems like one-time service/purchase.
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I was also wondering about its ability to determine the direction of traffic. If it relies on a location having a separate entrance and exit, that's a pretty big negative. I'm also wondering how it handles large groups. Does anyone have any idea how the hardware works?
There's not much actual information available (this should be concerning), but there have been some clues dropped into past HN threads. This is a picture posted in another HN thread of their "original sensor" which is just 2 basic IR sensors: https://s3.amazonaws.com/screenshots.angel.co/73/340163/7982... As far as I can tell from the updated website, the new sensor is the same thing, just dressed up nicer. Each sens…
Left wondering why you need a base controller and the dual-PIR's though, especially if the PIR's are connected to DC voltage anyway and not battery-powered like some other commentor said.
I get you would wanna use wifi to talk up to your cloud and maybe that's what the base is for. But seems like a waste if you got something expensive like a Raspberry Pi or other ARM A-series in there. There are much cheaper wifi chipsets out there now these days that could do the same thing without needing all that cost and space of an ARM Cortex A-core, plus wifi, Linux, etc. You could probably get away with putting a small wifi chipset in each of the dual-PIR housings and still come out ahead in cost. The ESP8266 sounds perfect for it actually.
Either way, a pretty cool product.
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It'll be interesting to see if Google starts to proactively load balance these sorts of situations - send people on several different routes at once to keep traffic flowing.
This problem is an active area of academic research in the transport operations/planning field. It's generally known as "concentration and overreaction". A classic example would be if a road is severely congested, and satnavs started advising drivers to take an alternative, smaller road, if too many people get the same advice that road will then end up even more congested and delay the people who followed the advice…
A common example I've seen used is: Automatic headlights on a car turning on in the dark. When the headlights turn on when you're in a garage or tunnel, they can create enough ambient light to trick the sensor into thinking it's light, and turning the headlights off. The solution here is to add a delay into the reaction.
I'm wondering what a solution is to a problem with mapping - is it add a delay to re-routing traffic? Or rerouting traffic randomly? Or spread traffic out over a number of routes? It's made harder by the fact that Google in this case won't be routing all traffic - just a subset.
Why does this need to connect to your servers? What happens if you become insolvent? Why can't I just buy the damn thing then use it? Why do I have to pay for a subscription to a service which is effectively a simple proxy between the device and my infrastructure?
That is my biggest thought. If this is oriented to hackers, let me own the thing so I can do some really cool stuff with it.
Why does this need to connect to your servers? What happens if you become insolvent? Why can't I just buy the damn thing then use it? Why do I have to pay for a subscription to a service which is effectively a simple proxy between the device and my infrastructure?
> Why does this need to connect to your servers? Because that's where the signal gets processed. We store all signal data ever captured and do all the math on an analyze server. The benefit of this is that as our hardware can be cheap enough to replace or give away and when our algorithm improves so too does all historical data.
> What happens if you become insolvent? Not sure yet. What happens if any of your providers become insolvent?
> Why can't I just buy the damn thing then use it? Because there's no margin or recurring value in the damn thing. And selling hardware is a bad idea right now.
> Why do I have to pay for a subscription to a service which is effectively a simple proxy between the device and my infrastructure? Because we're not selling the device. We're selling the analyzed data. Also, I should probably say, you're not our target customer. We're after companies that control / manage large networks of locations not individual developers.
To be honest, we'd love to give this to any developer who wants it and just see what they build. Hopefully, we'll be able to do that someday and support that community properly. Until then, this is the best way for us to be a sustainable business and not rely on the crazy thin and ever-decreasing margins of hardware sales.
Hope that addresses some of your questions.
Andrew
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Hardware/install is free, but costs you $25/month/location to receive your data. (Not that this means they are not also selling data elsewhere).
Yup, as soon as I read 'free hardware, free to install' I immediately though 'Service model' Also I don't think this data is particularly attractive to anyone except competitors... and even then its not like its an email list or anything, merely traffic.
Other products like this are quite expensive to implement and are geared more towards large scale deployments, not small businesses. I even looked into building my own sensor for this, but I simply don't have time. Happy to see this product emerge.
The site is rather vague. They provide the hardware and install it for free, which implies they're selling data to someone else. Who? There's no privacy policy. No terms of service. The "order" button just brings up a blank email. How does the device tell how many people are present based on counting at a doorframe? Is it counting people passing through the door? Does it detect direction? Is it good enough to estimat…
> which implies they're selling data to someone else. Who?
Typically our customers are startups who sell to SMBs (coffee shops, bars, restaurants, museums, etc). They charge merchants anywhere between $50-$500/mo/location for some kind of software or service. These are startups that sell POS systems, loyalty software, marketing services, discounts, handle logistics, and delivery.
> There's no privacy policy. No terms of service.
Frankly, it should have been there before launch but since people don't "buy" through our website, we decided to sacrifice legal thoroughness for speed to launch. Maybe a misstep but people seemed okay emailing us their request to order.
> How does the device tell how many people are present based on counting at a doorframe?
Two closely situated, parallel infrared distance sensors. We timestamp spikes in voltage as they come in allowing us to see o...1 = entrance. 1...0 = exit. Giving us the current count in a place.
> Is it counting people passing through the door? Direction?
Yes. Not the line outside. Although we can do line detection and estimate wait times. Yes.
> Is it good enough to estimate the number of people inside by subtracting out counts from in counts?
Yes. It's better than just an estimate.
> Will this work for wide entrances, such as malls? Is this a passive infrared sensor?
No. Our current model maxes out at roughly 90in -- that's with two sensors on either side of a double door facing one another. No it's AIR.
> 98% count accuracy ... If you already have surveillance cameras, you can often use them for counting.
You're right. We're just betting that customer-aversion to facial recognition and surveillance cameras is slowing adoption in the long tail of the market we're after - the various independent merchants and sellers that comprise a city and who are too busy making coffee and food to spend too much time on potential controversial technology. See: http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/29/philz-coffee-drops-euclid-a...
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Your home page freezes my Firefox (33.1 on Mac) :( . Have to pound through five or six unresponsive script warnings. After that, pretty cool idea and nice site!
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Yeah... I mean I appreciate that people pay lip-service to privacy but a surveillance camera that counts you as a distinct individual without your consent is an invasion of privacy. The cost is higher than the price tag, homie. Edit I am an employee of Density and definitely biased.
I think you should probably readjust your tact for any more comments today and in the future. Making insults, implications or even allegations about a competitor is never going to be in your company's best interest. It is just basic marketing and public relations. Don't try to sell people on your competition being lesser, even if it's true (which it is apparently not, in this case). That does absolutely nothing to se…
Product of tiredness and being trigger-happy with the reply button today.
Apologies to dfine and Placemeter.