Pointgrab
- Julie Isebaert
Difficulty: starter
Learning Objectives
After reading this article, you’ll be able to:
Understand PointGrab's people detection
Define if PointGrab’s data types suit your use case
What is Pointgrab?
The PointGrab™ sensors detect people’s presence, locations and numbers, and send analytics data over a secure, encrypted network connection.
Desk, Meeting Room and Reception areas are intended for real-time people counting. They produce information such as “Desk A is now occupied” or “Meeting Room B now contains 7 people”.
On the other hand, Traffic Line areas are intended to track traffic going in and coming out of a specific location. They produce information such as “In the last update period, 5 people crossed the Traffic Line area”.
How does it work?
Non-intrusive solution – images are never transmitted or stored on the sensor
All of the image processing is done on the sensor itself, the sensor does not store or output images, and has no interface to extract images, so privacy is fully protected. The sensor will only transmit the analytics data to the cloud management system.
As the sensor tracks peoples’ movement rather than personal devices (e.g. mobile phones), it is completely anonymous.
In the screenshot, you can see how the coordinates of the people arrive at Pointgrab? These are transmitted to the Workplace IoT platform as "2 people within detection range of sensor”.
How often is data captured?
Technically, the sensor can check every 15 sec – 15 minutes for coordinates. It will count the people in the area for at least half of the time of update time.
As a default, the data is uploaded into the Workplace Cloud every 1 min: this interval is low enough, that a person in the room will be captured, yet it also reduces false detection issues.
The data is processed every 1 minute, but because Workplace is mainly interested in changing values:
if there is a value change, this change is documented
if there is no value change compared to the last message, the data is stored after max 10 minutes. This means that in Workplace, you might see “last update from the sensor received 4 minutes ago”
How is Pointgrab data reflected in Workplace Live Views?
Decay Configuration options
Perhaps you would want to indicate in Workplace Live Occupancy View that if a Desk sensor has been triggered, the location is occupied for at least 2 more hours, so that colleagues and guests can go to lunch or drop by a meeting without having to fear that someone is clearing out their workplace? But at the same time you want to indicate that a meeting room has freed up as quickly as possible, so that it turns green (“available”/”not occupied”) and people can recognize this at a glance?
The Workplace back-end Studio configuration options have you covered: per room category, both the icon and the decay timer can be modified.
Knowing that Pointgrab data is processed every minute and allowing for some glitches, the timer can be set to anything higher than 5 minutes (5min being the minimum).
Pointgrab Accuracy
Pointgrab provides highly accurate data on Presence detection, yet some factors might impact people detection:
Make sure lights are turned on/there is enough daylight. It should not be too dark in the room
Nothing should be blocking the sensor detection area
items might be suspended from the ceiling (eg HVAC or light fixtures)
items might be too high and block visibility (eg high back chairs or office screens)
Reflections in windows (might be avoided by restricting count area in the configuration)
Installation needs to be level (not tilted)
Installation location: make sure to verify measurements (height + length/width) in the config platform
Configuration: make sure the configuration adheres to best practices described on PointGrab configuration
Make sure to check PointGrab installation location tips & tricks!
Pointgrab Footfall Mode
When a Pointgrab device is configured using Footfall, the footfall data will be visualized on Live Data floorplan | View by Footfall IN/ Footfall OUT + Footfall TOTAL.
The difference between Traffic IN and Traffic OUT indicates how many people are still inside the location. This value is calculated and is used as (indirect) Utilization value. (see Utilization and Occupancy Matrix | Indirect Utilization & Occupancy)
The calculated/ indirect Utilization value
real time data can be visualized in the Live Floorplan View By Space Utilization.
historical data can be visualized in the Replay - Timelapse and in the Space monitor dashboard.
Find more information on
https://www.pointgrab.com/our-product/
https://www.pointgrab.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/CogniPoint-Data-Sheet.pdf
Search