You don't have to resort to infrared sensors in order to provide anonymity, but they do inherently limit you potential accuracy and metrics you can prodive. It all comes down to where the data is processed and what is made available. Also, cheap camera components are coming down fast due to economies of scale, not sure how IR will play out in the long haul.
Camera: Real-time, Accurate
Break Beam: Anonymous, Accurate
Density: Real-time, Anonymous, Accurate, CheapThere's absolutely no information on what they consider "accurate," and anything I can find on older HN threads is very vague and implies that accuracy wasn't their main focus.
Here's a basic question I have: can this count a mob of 20 people walking out of store at the same time? If it can't, I believe "accuracy" should have some context, since there are other enterprise systems that do that no problem.
The landing page advertises this as an entry-level system for doorframes. It doesn't seem that this is made for costco-level swarms of people entering a large space at one time. That said, I also have my doubts on accuracy but the error margin is probably acceptable enough to most.
Edit I am an employee of Density and definitely biased.
Also, it would be nice if you would identify yourself as an employee of Density when you post comments.
Placemeter does much more than pay lip service to privacy. We pride ourself on our privacy efforts. If you want to lear more about them, @afar email me: david@placemeter.com
My other question is how you derive count without uniquely identifying someone. If I'm entering a shop and a PM sensor sees me, will it know when I leave?
1) the processing is happening aboard the sensor, counts are what are sent back to the servers
2) we don't do unique identification like that. We use object detection, which is different than using unique biometric markers like face detection. That means that we can track a person or a car within a frame of view, but not if they exit and re-enter the frame like in the case you described.
Does Density still use wifi pinging for part of its counts?
No wifi pinging. After Apple almost killed us a year ago with their MAC address policy change and we realized there was significant push back on privacy, we dropped the technology altogether.
It is just basic marketing and public relations. Don't try to sell people on your competition being lesser, even if it's true (which it is apparently not, in this case). That does absolutely nothing to sell me on your product, but instead makes me acutely aware that you see them as a threat which needs to be quashed.
For what it's worth, I also found your use of the word "homie" rather unprofessional, off-putting and patronizing, especially in a thread which acts as public announcement of your company's product.
These things combined have opened the door for your competitor to defend themselves in a more logical and professional manner, which I would say they've accomplished in this thread. I'm entirely unimpressed with how you are representing your company, but I am very impressed with how your competitor has responded.
Product of tiredness and being trigger-happy with the reply button today.
Apologies to dfine and Placemeter.