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Smart Restroom Project

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LADY ARCANE 23

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Hello everyone, I found this website to be interesting and it appears to me that a lot of solutions are being answered. I want to see if it will work for me. I am designing a project that is entitled Smart Restroom. What I am trying to do on this project as of right now is try to figure out how to use a counting system that will keep a consistant count of people entering the restroom and exiting the restroom and displaying it on the outside of the door so that a person will know if the restroom is over crowded. The goal of the counter is to avoid the over crowdedness of people in public restroom areas. So far I have been instructed to use a BCD Counter (7490N) and I don't know how to reset the display. Could someone please inform me on how I can reset the display? So far it stays at nine.
 
Dont you you need an Up/Down counter?

Count up when someone enters; count down when someone leaves. The number in the counter is the occupancy. Use a motion detector/timer inside to restroom to turn off the room lights after occupancy ceases. Reset the U/D counter every time the lights go off. The next person to enter restarts the process.
 
MikeMI, I'm using the counting system for a public restroom so I was thinking about using a infrared beam at the entrance door. once someone breaks the beam as they enter, it would trigger the counter to start counting.

Conrad Turbo, that same question came up durng my first presentation and I decided to use an entrance and and exit door and with the infrared beam being the sensor to trigger the counter to start counting, the beam will be designed to count legs like traffic counters count the tires and for a handicapped person, a button will be used to determine their entrance. Do you think I will still run into problems?
 
Forumlicker in this case I understand what you are saying so do you have any suggestions of what I could do to count that particular child? I was thinking because the mother will probably be the person using the restroom and she will be accompanying her child wouldn't that count as one instead of two?
 
In that particular situation(image) counting is almost impossible. I can't understand how can you think that the child is just accompanying her!!! Counting legs not at all a good way imagine two persons entering in a single full covered raincoat in a rainy season!
 
forumlicker, when i say the child will be accompanyied by her mother, I'm speaking on behave of when she is in the restroom, at that I age I would not let a child her size go in the restroom by herself. She is not old enough to do that. So thats what I mean by that and I think you are going a little bit to deep into the situation. Now I will be using a standard size door way and I don't think that it is possible for two people to enter the same door at the same time unless in the case of the image.
 
You could implement a PIR motion sensor inside restroom for detecting any active occupancy. But it'll make it more complex and counting people won't be accurate always using the current idea. More reliable solution will make it far complex. For example a multi directional detector and logic.
 
To get around it, the cheapest method is using one of these going in and one going out of the bathroom:

**broken link removed**

There are other ways as well, but would cost more and take much more work.
 
How would somebody determine what number is considered crowded? The occupants have several options in the restroom. The options and usage would also be different in the Mens room and the Ladies room. There are a certain number of sinks, toilets, and urinals for men/mirrors for the ladies. How do you count handicapped people? Wheelchair, crutches, seeing-eye dog... What about a 'gay' bar?
 
If you place two detectors about 4 inches apart (100mm in the horizontal direction) you can detect which detector is activated first and produce a "positive" or "negative" signal.
From this you can use a microcontroller to produce an output on a display.
I am currently working on exactly the same thing - a remote control up/down counter.
 
If the toilets and urinals have autoflushing units, you could record the # of times they flush. Since they monitor the usage of the bathroom...the only people that would be unaccounted for is anyone walking in to use the sink. Maybe estimate a 5% (or actually document the data yourself) of the total bathroom usage to create a "fudge" factor for the # of people who would use the sink only. Easier than a turnstile.
 
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