Re: Room occupancy detection

[Kevin Hawkins <yahoogroupskh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ahh - the holy grail of occupancy detection - I really wish we had a
solution...

Re Bluetooth - actually there is already a xAP application that does
some of this called xAP Blue from http://www.mi4.biz -  I don't know if
you'd like to play with that and see if from a general detection
perspective it achieves some of what you want.  It doesn't triangulate
as such but it may at least give you confidence that you're on the right
track.

Overall though I'm not sure that BT is the right way - as there are
always phones left on a table or people without phones, plus I rarely
carry mine.     I still feel a carefully written camera image analysis
(IR sensitive ?) based application that handles appropriate sized shapes
that appear in the field of view coupled with movement is a good basis ,
coping hopefully even with sleeping individuals on a sofa. Yes it might
get thrown by the occasional discarded coat (but so could BT).
Changing light conditions and shadows I'm sure are going to be hard to
handle.   This approach is already used in security applications (left
packages) and I had hoped ZoneMinder might eventually experiment with
such a feature for HA - perhaps pairing this with other realtime sensor
info like PIR's.  I guess security apps have fairly constant lighting
conditions , often without sunlight as well.

K



Brian Milton wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I know this is a big area in home automation,  I have used PIR's,
> infrared triggers to try detect occupancy.  But have the usual problem
> of not being 100% sure if someone is in the room or not and have
> lights etc. turn off even when your in the room.
>
> I have been working on an idea and was wondering what people think of
> it and would it be of interest.  It will be just a hobby and will most
> likely make it open source if it works out.
>
> My idea is to create a indoor positioning system using bluetooth,
> mainly thinking of peoples phones.  Your phone could be used to track
> what room you are in rather than trying to find out if someone went
> into a room or not.  So if your sitting in a room the system will know
> you are there, getting rid of the guess work.
>
> Obviously this will require some bluetooth devices placed around the
> house to triangulate position.  The main advantages i am doing this
> for is to get rid of the guess work, but to also have the automation
> more personalised to the specific user/room/appliances/time etc.  Also
> will look at using your phone for control.
>
> I am going to be developing this in java as its the main language i
> know and most phones will support it.  I also will include the
> x10/xAP/xPL API's and maybe more.
>
> Any taughts? Know of a similar system? Or am i wasting my time?
>
> Cheers
> Brian
>
>
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