How to Use People Counting

1. Introduction

To monitor the flow of people, we added People Counting as an advanced function to our cameras. It has been well-received by the market since released.

Now, we release firmware version 4x.7.0.77, separating People Counting from VCA and adding Statistics Report function. From this article, you can have a better understanding about People Counting, Analysis Settings and Analysis Search.

Note: Only network camera with firmware version 4x.7.0.77 or above supports this function.

1.1 What is People Counting 

People Counting is able to count how many people enter or exit during the setting period, which can therefore serve multiple purposes such as helping retailers to count how many customers came in a day. It records the number of people passing through the line automatically. People who cross along the direction of the arrow will be recorded as IN. On the contrary, they will be recorded as OUT. 

1.2 Installation Suggestions 

When the camera counts, it will frame each object. To ensure the accuracy of counting, we need to let the object pass the line completely. There are two installation suggestions as follows.

• Top Mounting: Top-mounted cameras can better separate people passing side-by-side. 

• Wall Mounting: Wall-mounted cameras can better identify people.

Note: Either way, you need to make camera and people have a proper distance. And there is enough area in front and behind the detection line for the camera to recognize the object.

2. How to Set People Counting

2.1 Basic Settings of People Counting 

Step1: Select Event→People Counting→People Counting in Configuration and enable it. PTZ series cameras have advanced options to select and configure different preset points.

Step2: Click Edit of Detection Line and draw a line. The direction of the arrow is IN. If necessary, you can also set Min and Max size limits of object to exclude abnormal targets.

Step3: Click Edit of Schedule Settings and Choose when to count people. 

Step4: If necessary, turn on Counting OSD to display People Counting on the LiveView.

 Table1 Description of the buttons

2.2 Alarm Settings of People Counting

Alarm Trigger: Enable Alarm and set Thresholds first, and then you could do other settings.

Alarm Action: Configure the specific actions of the camera when the alarm is triggered.

Table2 Description of the buttons

 

Alarm Setting: Set alarm settings.

Table3 Description of the buttons 

 

3. Regional People Counting

 

When enabling regional people counting, users can check the real-time number of people and the time of each person’s stay in the detection region

Settings steps are as shown below:

Step1: Enable Regional People Counting;

Step2: Set detection region and object size limits. The object size limits can refer to screenshot above;

Step3: Set detection schedule, edit the schedule settings and choose when to count people.

 

Step4: 

Set Alarm Trigger and Alarm Action, Alarm will be triggered and take actions what you chose when the thresholds reaches to a certain value.

Note:

Camera firmware version xx.7.0.78 or above  support regional people counting

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4. Statistics Report

After a certain time of counting, you can start using the Statistics Report function. With this function, you can search by Statistics Types or Report Type. The search result supports Line Chart and Histogram, which could help users to study flow trend.

 

 

 

Search: Select Event→People Counting→Statistics Report in Configuration. Before click Search, you need to configure each parameter.

Table4 Description of Parameters

 Click the button in the top-right corner to switch Line Chart and Histogram.

Export: Click Report Export to manually export a picture or a CSV sheet of current display result.

Click Auto Export to configure the time, range and direction for automatic export, which only supports CSV sheets.