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Party Squasher: guest occupancy counter for homes

partysquasher.com

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Re: Party Squasher: guest occupancy counter for homes

#41

Post by Gigachad »

defrost wrote: post #9
kedikedi wrote: post #4

Interesting approach. I have a feeling that this is intended for sparsely built houses (the typical american housing maybe?) since in a dense European city I’d imagine it would pick up tons of cell phone signals from other people in their own homes or, say, from people visiting the downstairs coffee shop terrace.

The 'fix' for that (applicable in some areas, not so much in others) would be to remember phone ID's and focus on numbers (and strength) of new ID's during the rental period. A downstairs coffee shop would be a semi periodic flux of a particular size, a party would be a surge over and above that flux and persisting outside of coffee shop hours. Again, pattern learning is only applicable in some scenarios .. but effec…

Phones randomize mac addresses so that probably wouldn't work. Presumably you can get a read on how many devices are scanning at once, but not track them long term.

Re: Party Squasher: guest occupancy counter for homes

#42

Post by rozenmd »

dylan604 wrote: post #23
aeternum wrote: post #6

This is pretty clever but could also lead to the greatest parties in recent history. Very soon the norm will be to keep your phone off at any airbnb party.

why turn off the phone? Just disable wifi???

Disabling WiFi on many phones doesn't actually disable wifi scanning - shopping centres use this to track recurring visits

Re: Party Squasher: guest occupancy counter for homes

#43

Post by compootr »

ipnon wrote: post #26
ParadisoShlee wrote: post #19

why are Landlords like this?

Parties don’t maximize profit. No fun is an externality of short-term rental apps.

yeah, but you do have to think about parties that get out of hand

"this is why we can't have nice things," because of that small %

Re: Party Squasher: guest occupancy counter for homes

#45

Post by 0_____0 »

EE84M3i wrote: post #39
0_____0 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Phone off maybe. Android still uses Wifi when Wifi is turned off, as part of it's location tracking service. I loathe it. Btw if you toggle location off enough times, Android will eventually stop nagging you about it. Let me use my device the way I want you f--- creeps!

I thought there was a separate wifi scanning setting for that behavior?

Yeah, you can turn off the setting that makes it so turning wifi off actually does that instead of leaving it on but telling you and your apps that it's off.

I could live with that, but what really chafes my bits is how your apps can't get so much as an NMEA string without you turning the creepy tracking telemetry that pipes data on all the SSIDs and Bluetooth beacons around you back to the mothership back on. And having Location turned off breaks many apps for no good reason.

Re: Party Squasher: guest occupancy counter for homes

#46

Post by giomasce »

The nice thing of intrusive sensors that sense things that are not sensed by your usual senses, like this, is that it's easy to saturate them while faking innocence. I.e., set up your laptop so that it does many scans and/or associations to the local WiFi, and then some light internet activity (the usual suspects: WhatsApp, Facebook, etc). The detector triggers, the landlord shows up to check what's going on, you show it's just you and your partner. Do that a few times until the landlord is convinced that the sensor is malfunctioning; unless they are IT technicals themselves, which I guess won't happen often, they will have a hard time understanding what's really going on, even more to prove it.

Re: Party Squasher: guest occupancy counter for homes

#47

Post by teractiveodular »

Gigachad wrote: post #36
Rendello wrote: post #2

I could definitely see the use from a landlord's perspective but of course would hate this as a tenant. My last landlord wanted me to sign a lot of arbitrary (and mostly unenforceable) rules. One was "no guests without permission". I read it over and asked him, "so if I have someone sleep over, you want me to call you on your cell?" He scratched out the rule.

This isn't a landlord / tenant device. It's for AirBnB hosts.

¿Porque no los dos?

Re: Party Squasher: guest occupancy counter for homes

#49

Post by averageRoyalty »

dylan604 wrote: post #22

So what happens if I'm a tech nerd that has so many devices that I bring with me? Laptop, phone, tablet, streaming device, second phone because gotta keep work/life separate, and then spouse's phone, tablet, then 2.5 kids worth of tablets. Based on device count alone, we're partying like it's 1999.

Same thought. It's unlikely I won't have at least 4 devices just myself. I assumed some sort of thermal sensor would be used here, assuming one device per person is ridiculous.

Re: Party Squasher: guest occupancy counter for homes

#50

Post by magic_smoke_ee »

kortilla wrote: post #40
stevenicr wrote: post #30

Pretty sure I saw a couple of party detection devices shown on some netflix airBnb creators show like 8(?) years ago. (show had a firehouse in DC revamp, then another episode with a california(?) 70's pad with 70s furniture, decor, pool.. definitely the kind of place you may want to party, yet the owners were hesitant to list it if they could not prevent that... I believe they used a combination of sound dB meters an…

Carbon dioxide* detectors, people don’t produce carbon monoxide

Well, actually, that's untrue. Carbonylhemoglobin formation due to metabolic and environmental CO, and subsequent breakdown releases CO. There are, in fact, CO breath analyzers. Smokers and smoke inhalation patients have much higher levels, whereas ordinary healthy people have detectable, nonzero levels. For the point of detecting crowds, it's still meaningless.
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