[kevin2r]

A phone app could replace this right? Using the front facing camera you could run some image recognition to count the flow of people and show the statistics on screen. Put the phone on a stand and leave it running. Much cheaper.

[flak48]

Their whole selling point seems to be that their hardware + software can count people accurately without needing a camera. The premise being that cameras spook people.

Cameras are already commonplace enough where I work, for security purposes. So not sure how easily cameras can be eliminated.

The dashboards they provide don't seem to be have to be coupled to the kind of ($850) hardware they are selling. Like you said, cameras should be able to do the job.

[afar]

I don't think cameras will be displaced / eliminated. It's just a question of whether or not they will be accepted as a form of active surveillance or remain a method of security. Today, they are largely security but it's entirely possible the world moves toward mass surveillance.

[afar]

Many have / are trying this. Harder to pull off than it seems. Privacy is a big part but distributing the infra to do this at scale is nontrivial. A number of years back Placemeter used to pay you 50/mo to install your Android device on a window sill so they could understand movement. Never quite took off.

[zyang]

Or you can just fingerprint the wifi/bluetooth signals from people's phones.

[afar]

MAC address tracking is one approach but it's imprecise and with the proliferation of "things with antennas," you have to do a lot of reconciling on the backend to not count 1 person as 3 when they have multiple devices on them. Euclid analytics tried this. It's a common but flawed approach to count (use depending).