Lyr3x
commented
3 years ago Hey! yes ToF Sensors which are emitting 940nm waves are naturally affected by direct sunlight. In the last years, i barely had issues with that due to the fact that i do not face the sensor to direct sunlight. The best possible position, where sunlight does play a minimal role is the ceiling mounting.
A way to mitigate the issue (currently not available anymore) is to add a light sensor and recalibrate (thats already working) to a certain delta. It is not in our interest to get precise distances, however the relation between we enter a zone and leave a zone needs to be consistent.
I did not know the AM8833, and it sounds very interesting. I tried to achieve counting with other thermal sensors before, and it was horribly unstable. The sensors I used were extremely sensitive to temp changes. I leave that issue open as I surely look into it.
jcastro
Hello! Thanks so much for sharing this. I've been long testing other repos who tried to do same counting with this sensor but in all of these I've found the sensor is not reliable at certain wavelengths during day. Tried several different sensor manufacturers, cases, position in the door frame and so on, always with same result.
I've installed today this repo (it's night time for me now) with the hope that somehow it will work better and software will more or less compensate for the hardware issues this sensor has, so will report back!
In any case, I wanted to also ask you if you have ever considered using instead the thermal sensor AMG8833 for doing the counting, which it seems what they're using here https://www.hiome.com/. With this sensor it seems we won't have at least the natural light problem. There's already some repos trying to come up with person detection (not counting) but it could be useful for inspiration if you ever consider it https://github.com/TheRealWaldo/esp8266-amg8833
Thanks!