What would you pay for flawless occupancy detection?

Quixote_1

Quixote_1

Active Member
Hi all,
I have a great idea for an invention that could solve all of our occupancy detection woes. I'm just wondering what the most you would pay (hypothetically) for a device that would 99% reliably detect not only whether a room is occupied, but the number of occupants as well. I'm not sure if I could build this for cheap enough so I'm just trying to get an idea of whether it's worth putting the time in to develop the product or not.
It would talk to the Elk so that you could keep track of the occupants using counters and trigger tasks based on occupancy and the number of occupants. What would you pay for a wired version and how much for a wireless version?
Thanks for your input.
 
My $.02 - I wouldn't mind paying a few hundred bucks for the whole downstairs - maybe up to $500... but that better include figuring out how the hell to wire down there with no basement on a slab foundation. I'd pay $500 for a wireless solution that told me with 99% accuracy if someone was down there (as long as that 99% means it doesn't count the cats, including the 27lb one).
 
No. In fact, I would consider that annoying and inconvenient. It would be an unobtrusive device that observes from a mounted location.
 
Work2Play said:
My $.02 - I wouldn't mind paying a few hundred bucks for the whole downstairs - maybe up to $500... but that better include figuring out how the hell to wire down there with no basement on a slab foundation. I'd pay $500 for a wireless solution that told me with 99% accuracy if someone was down there (as long as that 99% means it doesn't count the cats, including the 27lb one).
Click to expand...

Thanks for the response. How many rooms do you have down there? Would you want only to know if someone is down there, or would you want to know where they are as well?
 
If it is that accurate, I would probably be willing to pay a few hundred dollars as well. How will it deal with pets/toddlers?
 
You probably don't want to discuss this over the forum, but are you using a cheapened up VOx or Amorphous Silicon Thermal Detector?

I had worked on something like that at one point. We couldn't get enough "buyers" interested. We had "our" product cost down to ~$150-200ish per sensor, and a "nominal" (i.e. unknown) amount for the central processing device. So, I guess for "perfect" detection, I'd be willing to pay about that + 10-20% much per sensor (you need to make cash as well).

Since it was thermal, the idea would be to be able to detect if windows were open, heat vents were not working properly, how many occupants, where they were, and for the elderly, detect if they were in trouble (i.e. if the sensor was in a retirement home, and someone was in a room where you would NOT expect someone to be sleeping, and there is no movement from the person for a long period of time...or that you could tell that a bed was in a specific area, and during the day someone was not moving from a specific area (i.e. not the bed) for long periods of time...that if the person was IN the bed, you "watch" the head of the person, if it drop too far in temperature, trigger an alert.

In all cases, someone could be dispatched to check up on the person.

Since it was VOx or ASi, it is an "always" seeing thermal sensor. Unlike PIR or all the other "cheaper" sensors that one would buy today (all temperature based motion sensors are essentially the same technology...they are "AC coupled" where it sees MOTION, but if you sit still long enough, it loses you). Being based on VOx or ASi, you are ALWAYS seen. So, you need to make them smarter, masking off specific areas as heat vents.

As I said, I used to design this kind of stuff ($20K+ thermal imaging cameras), so if you want to chat, I might be able to help you out, or at least help you avoid pitfalls.

--Dan
 
I would be willing to pay a couple of hundred dollars per room.

BTW, I have a friend who is a patent attorney and have had many a late drunken conversation with him. Be careful discussing you ideas, it establishes a public timeline of when you came up with the idea and can make your idea non-patentable. Even when discussing it with friends. Of course that assumes you are planning on patenting it. The other thing I learned was if you discuss an idea with your friend the patent attorney and throw a dollar at him, he can't discuss it with anyone else and the drinks are free... :)
 
That might end up being too much of a processing load on your server, plus, isn't the Kinect USB 2.0? How are you extending that over 30 feet?

:)
 
i'm using a dockstar, a $9 usb capture device, an old camera & motion software (with very specific masks defined) for motion sensing where a regular PIR would always pick up leaves/shrubs blowing in the wind, etc. it works very well. i plan on trying it out indoors as well.
 
Ahh...the Holy Grail of home automation.

I'd agree with others and pay ~$150-200 per room or ~$500 per floor. But it would really have to work and solve the problem of someone in a room but sitting quietly reading or watch video without the need to wave at the sensor every x minutes.
 
That'd be invaluable in automation. If it was 99% accurate, including motionless people, you could cut your energy costs drastically. Imagine lights being turned off whenever you left a room. I would no longer have to worry about my children leaving lights on in the laundry room because they had too much to carry to turn off the lights. The garage is another big area where the family leaves the lights on, mostly because they go out there to grab food or drink from the second fridge. Imagine the heat/AC being turned down a few degrees when you left the house and automatically resuming your desired temperature when you returned.

I'd be willing to pay ~100-200 per room for such a feature.
 
Quixote,

Occupancy upstairs would be nice too now that we're talking about it... like JTR talked about that - I can do 90% of that through single cascading actions - but one kids come into play, all bets are off.

Rather than describe the layout, here's a floorplan of what I'd be dealing with. http://www.cocoontech.com/forums/index.php?app=core&module=attach&section=attach&attach_rel_module=post&attach_id=3571
 
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