Fluke Process Instruments

This guide discusses the Occupancy register type. This register enables the number of people in a room, or area, to be calculated and communicated separately.

This register type is ideal for applications as room utilization reporting, including building controls management.

When occupancy reporting on rooms with multiple doors is required, multiple devices may be used in wide tracker mode, or preferably using remote registers, to pass counts to a primary unit to consolidate into a single occupancy number.

Optionally, an Irisys Fine Motion Room Sensor may be used connected via Bluetooth. This PIR based sensor provides an automatic ‘Occupancy reset’ function when a long period of inactivity has been seen, which may be required in some situations.

Pre-Requisites

It is strongly recommended that your Vectors are updated to very latest firmware before starting to ensure full compatibility. 

If utilising multiple Vector Analytics installed at various entrances and exits into the same occupancy area, all Vectors should be on the same (latest) firmware version.

It should be noted that the Occupancy register should only be configured on one device. The additional IN and OUT count register values from any other devices are passed into the Occupancy register via the Remote register types. Those remote registers should be configured on all the additional Vectors before continuing with the Occupancy register setup.

Operation

At a basic level, the Occupancy register takes the IN and OUT counts and does a simple calculation to determine the number of people in an area - a room, zone, or building.

But it is important to understand that no People counting system can ever be 100% accurate, for 100% of the time, and due to the inaccuracies in all people counting devices (no matter how small), it is entirely possible for the number of people leaving an area to be recorded as more or less than those that entered the area.

This means that the main problem with using the IN minus OUT calculation for an occupancy value is that over a period of time, a 'cumulative error' will build up and be present in the Occupancy value. This error may not always be obvious but depending on the counting bias, will be revealed either as an occasional negative value, or at the end of the day when the area is known to be empty and the value is not zero.

To help alleviate these types of issues the Irisys Occupancy register employs the below additional advanced functionality:

• Occupancy values can never go below zero
• Occupancy registers have a configurable timeout value which is used to zero the occupancy value after a sufficient period of time where no counts over the IN lines is seen (used for automatically zeroing overnight ready for the next day - useful for large areas/buildings).
• Occupancy registers can work with the Irisys Fine Motion Room Sensor, in order to zero the occupancy value automatically on a finer timeframe based on seeing no activity from the PIR mounted inside the room. This is useful for smaller areas like meeting rooms.
• See also the Occupancy FIFO register type which includes individual timeouts on a per person basis. This is extremely useful for negating any IN count bias which may be present, which would normally prevent the occupancy of smaller rooms, like washrooms, from reducing down to zero when vacant.

Instructions

Before starting, there needs to be two counting lines configured which will feed into the Occupancy register. These lines need to simply count IN and OUT of the area of interest and should be configured to operate in a count mode conducive to the occupancy calculation – Immediate Count Mode (with Anti-dither disabled), Deferred count mode (this is the preferred and default count mode), or they can be the Smart Boundary line register type instead. 

Both directional lines should be configured with the same settings. Specifically, the count mode must be the same for each, with lines placed on top of each other in the field of view with only their direction being different  – this is important to prevent any dithering on or around the count lines from generating more increments in one direction than the other.

Similarly, if any height filtering or staff detection settings are configured these too must be the same on both lines.

If using the Smart Boundary line types the grouping functionality should not be employed.

It is also recommended to label the count lines with meaningful names to indicate the directions. This will help with configuration of the Occupancy register later on. E.g. “IN” and “OUT”.

If connected to a Vector via an Estate Manager connection, make sure you select the ‘Live View’ option to make changes

To add an occupancy register:   

If you're using the Fine Motion Room Sensor, ensure it is shown in the registers dialog along with the IN and OUT count line registers, before proceeding:

Click the plus symbol (+) on the Register dialog window:

Then choose the "Occupancy" type register and click 'Next':

Give the register a meaningful name and click 'Next':

Under 'Occupancy Inputs', select all the appropriate registers for counting IN to the zone:

If using Remote registers to access additional IN and OUT counts from other Vectors installed at others doors into the same Occupancy area, ensure they are all ticked correctly:

Under 'Occupancy Outputs', select all the appropriate registers for counting OUT of the zone:

If using multiple Vectors to cover all other doorways into the Occupancy area, again ensure that the OUT registers are all assigned correctly:

If you have a Fine Motion Room Sensor, ensure that it is enabled under the 'Occupancy Reset' section:

The occupancy register supports up to four Fine Motion Room Sensors for larger rooms. Just make sure each one is assigned to it's own separate register before starting and then add them all to the Occupancy Reset section. See example here showing two Fine Motion Room Sensors:

Under the 'Reset Timeout' this value affects if, and when, the Occupancy value is reset to zero. An internal timer counts down from the last count increment and if ever the value counts down to zero the occupancy value will be reset to zero. Essentially this means that when no activity has been detected for a while, the area is deemed to be empty and so any inaccurate counting that may have occurred will be corrected. This means that the Reset Timeout must be long enough to not be inadvertently triggered. If the Fine Motion Room Sensor is present then the reset timeout can be shorter:

It should be noted that if you do not want to have an automatic reset, simply configure the timeout value to a large value that will not be reached. Note that this is not recommended as the occupancy value should reset over night at the very least to ensure that everything starts from zero the next day.

Click Next.

As part of the Occupancy Register a Wait Time component is included by default. In some situations/projects/applications it may be preferable to disable this:

Click Next.

A summary of the settings you have chosen will be shown. Click Back to make changes. Click 'Add Register' to finish:

Once the Occupancy Register has been added, you will see three components, or two if you chose to disable the Wait Time Component (see above):

The 'Reset' register count is how many times the Occupancy register has reset using the 'Main Reset Timeout'. 

The 'Wait' register will increase every few seconds and when the configured main Reset value is reached, occupancy will be reset to zero. Because this value changes regularly, when using MQTT for data collection, it may be preferable to disable this, see above.