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Installing the hardware
Written for whoever is actually on site with a drill. The theme throughout: what you install decides what the numbers can mean, and no amount of configuration afterwards changes that.
Decide what each space needs to answer
Work backwards from the question, not forwards from the catalogue.
| The question | What it needs |
|---|---|
| Is this room in use right now? | A radar, or a fixed counting sensor |
| How many people are in it? | A radar, or a counting sensor |
| Where is this asset? | Tags, and three or more gateways spread around the space |
| Is this person in the building? | Tags, and one gateway per area is enough |
| How busy was this entrance? | A people counter on the door |
| How many people are in the building? | People counters on every door, netted up |
| How warm is it? | An environmental sensor |
| Is anyone in this toilet or room right now? | A PIR or presence sensor |
| Was this door left open? | A door contact |
| Is there water on the floor? | A leak probe |
| How much electricity does this board use? | An energy meter or CT clamp |
The row that catches people out is the second. Tags cannot answer it. A room with gateways and no radar reports how many tags are in it, which in an office where nobody wears one is zero, all day, correctly. Occupancy: which number is which is the ten minutes that prevents this conversation.
What goes where
- Gateways — they hear tags and anchor positioning. Setting one up, from the box to Omaya: Dusun, Dusun DSGW-200 angle of arrival, MOKO, MikroTik KNOT, Minew G1, Milesight LoRaWAN, or any LoRaWAN gateway through ChirpStack.
- Radars — they count people, tagged or not.
- People counters and tags — counting people through a doorway, and following things that move.
- Presence, motion and door sensors — yes/no presence (PIR, presence sensors), door contacts, doorway counters.
- Environment sensors — temperature, humidity, CO₂ and particulates, light, noise, water leaks.
- Energy meters, CT clamps and plugs — what draws power, and the meter hierarchy that keeps totals honest.
Once it is in, many sensors' settings can be changed from Omaya instead of going back with a phone: see Configuring devices from Omaya. Recipes shows what to do with it: toilet visits by gender from one counter and one PIR, switching off an empty room, a leak that becomes a work order.
Then, before you pack up: the checks worth doing on site, because every one of them costs five minutes now and a return visit later.
Two rules that apply to everything
Record where you actually put it, not where the plan said. Positioning is computed from where Omaya believes the hardware is. A gateway recorded three metres from where it hangs pulls every estimate near it towards a place nothing is. If you moved something during the install, move it on the plan too.
Power and mounting outlive the electronics. A sensor on a battery in a ceiling void is a return visit in eighteen months. Where mains is available, use it; where it is not, note the install date so the battery forecast has somewhere to start from.