DIY Pax Counter ESP32
This service describes how to build a mini Pax counter which is a proof-of-concept device for people monitoring in real time and anonymously.
This service describes the construction of an open source based device for counting. Thus allows to estimate how many people are around it. Furthermore it is fully privacy compliant as it does not store the MAC addresses or other private information of the peoples’ device. Especially in times of corona, the pax counter can be used to detect large crowds.
This Pax-Counter is built on a cheap ESP32 LoRa board. It counts the WIFI and Bluetooth signals in its coverage. The source code can run on several ESP32 boards (further information in the GitHub repository). This project provides only the sensor layer. The Pax-Counter must be connected to a public or private LoRaWAN network.
Paxcounter is a proof-of-concept device for metering passenger flows in realtime. It counts how many mobile devices are around. This gives an estimation how many people are around. Paxcounter detects Wifi and Bluetooth signals in the air, focusing on mobile devices by filtering vendor OUIs in the MAC adress. Intention of this project is to do this without intrusion in privacy: You don’t need to track people owned devices, if you just want to count them. Therefore, Paxcounter does not persistenly store MAC adresses and does no kind of fingerprinting the scanned devices. Data is transferred to a server via a LoRaWAN network, and/or a wired SPI slave interface. It can also be stored on a local SD-card. You can build this project battery powered and reach a full day uptime with a single 18650 Li-Ion cell. This can all be done with a single small and cheap ESP32 board for less than $20.
This service is available world wide. Some noteworthy locations are marked on the map
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- Open source
The pax counter is collecting the the WIFI and Bluetooth signals in its coverage. This data than flows over the LoRaWAN communication network to the central data storage of the TTN network. The data will be than provided via web service and can be viewed on the end device or can be directly monitored on the display of the ESP32 board.
