RE: moving away from the remote-control paradigm

["Paul Gordon" <paul_gordon@xxxxxxx>]

Mark,

We discussed this very scenario at some great length about a year (or so)
ago...

When we got into the nitty-gritty of it, it really is not as simple as it
sounds like it ought to be!

With only one person in a house, its actually quite simple. with every
additional person, the complexity squares! - you can't use any SINGLE
detection technology to achieve it IMHO... - just imagine scenarios like:
you are in a room, SWMBO is in an adjacent room, and there is a connecting
door between them.. either or both of you may be moving about, or may be
totally still, (so PIR's are immediately not ideal)..
Either or both of you may be moving about immediately next to the
connecting
door, (so pressure mats could be tricky), either of you may move between
rooms, and heaven forbid - you may actually swap places (simultaneously
passing each other in the doorway!) - all of which needs to be coded for...

Then go a step further, and imagine that there is another route between
these two rooms - lets say you  could go through another door into the
kitchen, then from the kitchen into the other room... you've then got to
account for every possible combination of occupancy state change via that
route as well...

Then add a 3rd person! - getting a feel for just how nightmarish this
really
could become yet? - Don't even think about pets, and whether you do or do
not want to account for occupancy by wandering animals...

If you want to do nothing more complex than just "is this room
occupied"
then with enough consideration of all the possibilities, and utilisation of
appropriate existing technologies, that shouldn't be as you say
"beyond the
wit of man". But, if you want to advance that to "How many people
are in
this room", or "who is in this room" - AAAARRRRGGGHHH MY
BRAINS EXPLODING!!

Paul G.

(I'm going home now to cry...)


>
>Thanks.
>
>Is there some way of sensing not just that I've been through a doorway
>(broken a beam), but to tell which DIRECTION I was going in.
>
>Given that there are only 2 of us in the house, it wouldn't be beyond
>the wit of man to be able to say that "person enters room",
ROOM IS NOW
>OCCUPIED, "person enters room", "person leaves",
"person leaves", ROOM
>IS NOW EMPTY ... type of thing, but this is contingent on being able to
>detect the diffence between "enters" and "leaves".
>
>Regards,
>
>Mark Harrison
>Head of Systems, eKingfisher


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