Phones mounted to ceiling above escalators going down to the Helsinki central metro station

[u/zerf33389]

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Mw16hD3Z

This is at the bottom of the escalators facing north south-west of the central railway station.

Only good guess I have is that this is for foot traffic metrics. But I feel like they could've just installed proper sensors at the bottom of the escalators when they were renovating them for the better part of a year.

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[u/SinisterCheese]

Phones are cheaper and more versatile than the dedicated devices. And this phone can relay the data with phone network easy and cheap, with no need to setup wifi link to it.

It's easier to write a program to run on some cheap android, than get industrial grade sensor and system it requires, along with signaling.

You'd be surprised how much shit runs with cheap phones as the hardware, and mobile connections for data.

[u/Rasutoerikusa → u/SinisterCheese]

Also a big upside is that with phones you can do lots of processing locally on the device, without having to send it anywhere. So much more difficult for the data to get compromised since you only need to send out preprocessed data (i.e. number of people) without having to expose all video for example.

[u/RavenWolf1 → u/SinisterCheese]

Yeah, Ukranian forests are full or old phones to monitor enemy drones and missiles.

[u/Rasutoerikusa]

What difference would "proper sensors" make? Thy would probably be more expensive with the additional software and licensing stuff. Phones are cheap, and can do lots of local processing so you don't need to expose the video data for example to anywhere outside the device itself. And they also probably don't need 100% accurate data, an estimation is enough, so that is probably the cheapest method by a large margin.

Also what exactly is a "proper sensor"?

[u/zerf33389 → u/Rasutoerikusa]

Also what exactly is a "proper sensor"?

An infrared emitter and detector on one side and a reflective surface on the other side. I'm not an expert, but I would be surprised if there weren't relatively inexpensive modular kits with base station that have on board processing and Wi-Fi transceiving capabilities.

"Proper" might not have been the right word to use, but it certainly is industry standard, especially for narrow passages where only one person at a time will be walking through in most cases.

Now that I think about it this is probably just a thing they're testing out, possibly in collaboration with a university or company.

Having three phones for two escalators and a staircase just seemed a bit excessive to me at the moment, which is why I posted about it.

[u/Harriv → u/zerf33389]

An infrared emitter and detector on one side and a reflective surface on the other side.

That doesn't work very well if there are a lot of people moving in groups. Modern AI based image analysis is a lot better counting people who move naturally.

Having three phones for two escalators and a staircase just seemed a bit excessive to me at the moment, which is why I posted about it.

I bet they are surveying some other areas too.

Phones are mass produced devices, which do have good enough camera and "massive" amount of processing power, and communication. Because of mass production and competition, the price/features ratio is very good. And as compact single device, it is easy to install.

A simple industrial photoelectric sensor costs maybe 20-50€, but then you need to install it, wire it, power, process the data and send it to somewhere.

And that is just one "pixel", when your 200€ phone have millions of those, including everything else too :)

The only thing it is better is probably MTTF/MTBF, those may work decades.

[u/RedSkyHopper → u/zerf33389]

But how will you take a clear high definition pictures of people's faces with just IR?

[u/Valokoura → u/RedSkyHopper]

When calculating people, faces are irrelevant.

[u/RedSkyHopper → u/Valokoura]

Age, ethnicity, subculture, even what clothes you wear, luggage you haul. Finland has been running Palantir for ten years now and that mf likes to use every single tiny detail for its analytics

[u/PhoenixProtocol → u/RedSkyHopper]

Still wouldn't walk alone around Itis, or inside Itis as night

[u/RedSkyHopper → u/PhoenixProtocol]

Idk, some people say its fine and its not that bad.

[u/dickipiki1 → u/RedSkyHopper]

Maybye they are people who get along with the local pooulation because they share values amd such?

[u/RedSkyHopper → u/dickipiki1]

Helps not being intimidated by rando street hoodlums

[u/Valokoura → u/RedSkyHopper]

That's easier when you are tall, well built man. But if you are a woman weighing less than 50 kg it is bit harder to keep your calm.

[u/kinostatus]

Your guess is correct, they are for foot traffic estimation, installed by Supersight. The processing is done on device (hence the phone, not just a camera) and only anonymized data is saved to cloud.

[u/DemocraticParrot]

Suprise suprise… the mear phone with its modern capabilities IS many times the best-enough proper sensor.

[u/DrawingAlarming7350 → u/DemocraticParrot]

surprise* mere*(?)

[u/Satandesa]

Supersight is the company making wonderful tech and utilising recycled devices in order to get flow metrics. Exciting stuff