Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Density – Anonymous People Counter and API

density.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 153 posts

Re: Show HN: Density – Anonymous People Counter and API

#51

Post by afar »

sultanofsaltin wrote: post #36

Don't camera systems beat this in pretty much every way? http://www.placemeter.com/ comes to mind. You don't have to resort to infrared sensors in order to provide anonymity, but they do inherently limit you potential accuracy and metrics you can prodive. It all comes down to where the data is processed and what is made available. Also, cheap camera components are coming down fast due to economies of scale, not sure…

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.

Re: Show HN: Density – Anonymous People Counter and API

#52

Post by [deleted] »

codeshaman wrote: post #7

>> "After adding Density, we saw as much as a 950% increase in site traffic to supported locations. Our users love it." - Darren Buckner, Workfrom CEO When I use google maps, it shows me how busy various roads are and it also chooses the fastest route based on how fluid the traffic is. Seems like google maps is just observing the world and making decisions based on those observations. Now I was wondering, what if all…

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Density – Anonymous People Counter and API

#53

Post by pdeuchler »

codeshaman wrote: post #7

>> "After adding Density, we saw as much as a 950% increase in site traffic to supported locations. Our users love it." - Darren Buckner, Workfrom CEO When I use google maps, it shows me how busy various roads are and it also chooses the fastest route based on how fluid the traffic is. Seems like google maps is just observing the world and making decisions based on those observations. Now I was wondering, what if all…

I live in Boulder and this happens all the time during ski season. When traveling towards I-70 there's a longer, more circuitous route which breaks off of Highway 6 and goes through Idaho Springs. This path is longer, but cuts off the beginning of the initial drive into the Front Range... it's also just a two lane mountain road.

Sometimes google maps will detect heavy traffic on I-70 and start re-routing drivers the other way... unfortunately this very quickly creates a bottleneck that Google Maps can't detect in time (traffic goes from 0mph to 60mph to 0mph in the mountains) so it'll continue to funnel people down that "shortcut" until the traffic essentially equalizes with the I-70 traffic.

There's an even worse side effect, as those who went through Idaho Springs eventually have to get back onto I-70 to get to the ski resorts, so now that on ramp (which is a metered on ramp) backs up, further hurting both I-70 and the "shortcut" traffic. It's a real terrible feedback loop that essentially is caused by Google Maps not being able to adequately predict how much traffic the Idaho Springs route can handle, which seems like a hard problem to solve (especially generally).

Edit: Thought about this more and realized predicting ski traffic is more or less a proxy for predicting the weather, so I highly doubt this is a fixable problem (at least in this specific case)

Re: Show HN: Density – Anonymous People Counter and API

#55

Post by sultanofsaltin »

escobar wrote: post #50
jordanmessina wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, the increase was on the webpages that included Density to show seating capacity.

I also find this particularly confusing/misleading - since you deal mainly with physical locations (often called sites by owners), using the word "site" instead of "web traffic" seems odd. Also, listing a web based metric as large as 950% without any type of time interval really kills the true significance of that metric.

My favorite statistic: 73.6% of all statistics are made up.

My 2nd favorite: 950% of 0 is 0.

Re: Show HN: Density – Anonymous People Counter and API

#56

Post by escobar »

valarauca1 wrote: post #23
jordanmessina wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're using infrared sensors to detect ingresses and egresses from locations.

How does the solution handle multi-ingress/egress points? Could it be used for tracking population leaving during a fire drill? As often this is the first question asked by first responders, "Is anyone still inside?"

This would be a reallly cool application if PIR's were capable of counting "horde" foot traffic, like a giant mass of people streaming out of a door during an alarm. I don't think that something like a PIR could handle that number of people, since it's just the single beam.

Re: Show HN: Density – Anonymous People Counter and API

#57

Post by pkelchte »

saosebastiao wrote: post #45
jordanmessina wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’re using infrared sensors. Both the emitter and detector are on a single sensor, so we only affix our hardware to one side of a doorframe. This is different than break beam which requires hardware on each side of a door.

How much accuracy do you lose when people are dressed up in full winter gear?

When you would wear metamaterial stealth suits maybe you can avoid being detected by our IR sensors, we're curious as to what you have available!

Re: Show HN: Density – Anonymous People Counter and API

#58

Post by escobar »

daenz wrote: post #49
sultanofsaltin wrote: post #36

Don't camera systems beat this in pretty much every way? http://www.placemeter.com/ comes to mind. You don't have to resort to infrared sensors in order to provide anonymity, but they do inherently limit you potential accuracy and metrics you can prodive. It all comes down to where the data is processed and what is made available. Also, cheap camera components are coming down fast due to economies of scale, not sure…

From the landing page: Camera: Real-time, Accurate Break Beam: Anonymous, Accurate Density: Real-time, Anonymous, Accurate, Cheap

Yeah, I find that claim particularly amusing since they're just using a single PIR sensor, which is far less accurate than any camera based system. There's no way that you can claim a single PIR beam is as accurate as a camera based system.

There's absolutely no information on what they consider "accurate," and anything I can find on older HN threads is very vague and implies that accuracy wasn't their main focus.

Here's a basic question I have: can this count a mob of 20 people walking out of store at the same time? If it can't, I believe "accuracy" should have some context, since there are other enterprise systems that do that no problem.

Re: Show HN: Density – Anonymous People Counter and API

#59

Post by mmorris »

codeshaman wrote: post #7

>> "After adding Density, we saw as much as a 950% increase in site traffic to supported locations. Our users love it." - Darren Buckner, Workfrom CEO When I use google maps, it shows me how busy various roads are and it also chooses the fastest route based on how fluid the traffic is. Seems like google maps is just observing the world and making decisions based on those observations. Now I was wondering, what if all…

Since in NYC taxis are a substantial portion of road traffic, I once had the idea that NYC should have a special navigation platform (maybe based on Google Maps?) that the taxis are mandated (or, more likely, highly encouraged) to follow, which would essentially load balance the traffic.

The city could include data about road closures, police & fire incidents, etc.

This might even be used to reduce traffic along bus routes, thereby increasing efficiency for them as well.

If someone works in the T&LC and wants to implement this feel free. ;)

EDIT: Note this works particularly well in Manhattan where the grid system means there are generally many routes of equal length between any two points.

Re: Show HN: Density – Anonymous People Counter and API

#60

Post by web007 »

Please don't be too clever for your own good - let me Cmd-Click on the links to open in a new tab.

I don't want to be taken away from your page, I want to continue reading more about YOUR product before I go to view your "partner" sites. Same goes for your API, Twitter, etc.

Post reply on HN