There are various ways to detect motion. The most popular method in most commercial and household units is PIR. PIR stands for Passive InfraRed. These sensors typically detect Infrared that is emitted by humans or other animals. However, one big drawback of these devices is that they mainly detect motion and have very low resolution.
These PIR sensors can’t detect stationary humans. Therefore, in many scenarios, these are not ideal solutions. For example, you are in a bathroom that may be equipped with motion-sensing light. So, when you enter the room, the light will come on. However, if you are sitting down in the room, the lights will go off after a few seconds because it can’t detect any motion.
In many scenarios, this PIR-equipped equipment is not acceptable and becomes annoying.
However, there are better solutions in the market, better than PIR.
In this article, we are going to give 2 solutions. Use whichever you like depending on your situation.
Human Detection Through Image Processing:
Nowadays there is an off-the-shelf algorithm available that can process videos and detect various objects. One such is YOLO. These algorithms are so tiny that you can run them on a Pi device.
Therefore, with a Pi5, camera, you can quickly make a device that can detect humans with the YOLO algorithm.
However, there are a few drawbacks to this.
One is the Pi5 and a Pi Camera would be almost $100. Another drawback is these will consume almost 30W power. For continuous application, it’s a significant energy use and cost.
However, it will detect humans with the most accuracy on Earth.
Human Detection with LD2410 Sensor:
This LD2410 sensor is the most advanced human detection sensor on the market we have seen. These only cost a few dollars, are highly reliable, and consume less than 1W of energy.
The LD2410 Human detection sensor uses a 24GHz Radar to detect humans and can detect human motion and stationary humans at the same time.
Therefore, if you come to a room and sit or lie down, the LD2410 will continuously detect humans without fail.
We have never seen anything like this sensor, therefore, it’s the perfect choice for human detection.
We predict that, in the future, this LD2410 sensor will replace the PIR sensor.