Paxcounter is a proof-of-concept device for metering passenger flows in realtime. It counts how many mobile devices are around. This gives an estimation how many people are around. Paxcounter detects Wifi and Bluetooth signals in the air, focusing on mobile devices by filtering vendor OUIs in the MAC adress.
Intention of this project is to do this without intrusion in privacy: You don't need to track people owned devices, if you just want to count them. Therefore, Paxcounter does not persistenly store MAC adresses and does no kind of fingerprinting the scanned devices.
<AHREF="https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2670713">Heltec</A>, <AHREF="https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2811127">TTGOv2</A>, <AHREF="https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3005574">TTGOv2.1</A> for example.<br>
<b>Power consumption</b> was metered at around 1000mW, depending on board (i.e. has display or not) and user settings in paxcounter.conf. If you are limited on battery, you may want to save around 30% power by disabling bluetooth (commenting out line *#define BLECOUNTER* in paxcounter.conf).
- **edit paxcounter.conf** and tailor settings in this file according to your needs and use case. Please take care of the duty cycle regulations of the LoRaWAN network you're going to use.
- **create file loraconf.h in your local /src directory** using the template [loraconf.sample.h](https://github.com/cyberman54/ESP32-Paxcounter/blob/master/src/loraconf.sample.h) and populate it with your personal APPEUI und APPKEY for the LoRaWAN network. If you're using popular <AHREF="https://thethingsnetwork.org">TheThingsNetwork</A> you can copy&paste the keys from TTN console or output of ttnctl.
To join the network only method OTAA is supported, not ABP. The DEVEUI for OTAA will be derived from the device's MAC adress during device startup and is shown as well on the device's display (if it has one) as on the serial console for copying it to your LoRaWAN network server settings.
If your device has a fixed DEVEUI enter this in your local loraconf.h file. During compile time this DEVEUI will be grabbed from loraconf.h and inserted in the code.
If your device has silicon **Unique ID** which is stored in serial EEPROM Microchip 24AA02E64 you don't need to change anything. The Unique ID will be read during startup and DEVEUI will be generated from it, overriding settings in loraconf.h.
Use <AHREF="https://platformio.org/">PlatformIO</A> with your preferred IDE for development and building this code. Make sure you have latest PlatformIO version.
To upload the code to your ESP32 board this needs to be switched from run to bootloader mode. Boards with USB bridge like Heltec and TTGO usually have an onboard logic which allows soft switching by the upload tool. In PlatformIO this happenes automatically.<p>
<AHREF="https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/labs/story/program-your-lopy-from-the-arduino-ide-using-lmic">instructions</A> how to do it. Don't forget to press on board reset button after switching between run and bootloader mode.<p>
The original Pycom firmware is not needed, so there is no need to update it before flashing Paxcounter. Just flash the compiled paxcounter binary (.elf file) on your LoPy/LoPy4/FiPy. If you later want to go back to the Pycom firmware, download the firmware from Pycom and flash it over.
**Depending on your country's laws it may be illegal to sniff wireless networks for MAC addresses. Please check and respect your country's laws before using this code!**
(e.g. US citizens may want to check [Section 18 U.S. Code § 2511](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2511) and [discussion](https://github.com/schollz/howmanypeoplearearound/issues/4) on this)
(e.g. UK citizens may want to check [Data Protection Act 1998](https://ico.org.uk/media/1560691/wi-fi-location-analytics-guidance.pdf) and [GDPR 2018](https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-data-protection-regulation-gdpr/key-definitions/))
(e.g. Citizens in the the Netherlands may want to read [this article](https://www.ivir.nl/publicaties/download/PrivacyInformatie_2016_6.pdf) and [this article](https://autoriteitpersoonsgegevens.nl/nl/nieuws/europese-privacytoezichthouders-publiceren-opinie-eprivacyverordening))
Note: If you use this software you do this at your own risk. That means that you alone - not the authors of this software - are responsible for the legal compliance of an application using this or build from this software and/or usage of a device created using this software. You should take special care and get prior legal advice if you plan metering passengers in public areas and/or publish data drawn from doing so.
Paxcounter generates identifiers for sniffed MAC adresses and collects them temporary in the device's RAM for a configurable scan cycle time (default 240 seconds). After each scan cycle the collected identifiers are cleared. Identifiers are generated by salting and hashing MAC adresses. The random salt value changes after each scan cycle. Identifiers and MAC adresses are never transferred to the LoRaWAN network. No persistent storing of MAC adresses, identifiers or timestamps and no other kind of analytics than counting are implemented in this code. Wireless networks are not touched by this code, but MAC adresses from wireless devices as well within as not within wireless networks, regardless if encrypted or unencrypted, are sniffed and processed by this code. If the bluetooth option in the code is enabled, bluetooth MACs are scanned and processed by the included BLE stack, then hashed and counted by this code.
If you're using [TheThingsNetwork](https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/) (TTN) you may want to use a payload converter. Go to TTN Console - Application - Payload Formats and paste the code example below in tabs Decoder and Converter. This way your MQTT application can parse the fields `pax`, `ble` and `wifi`.
To track a paxcounter device with on board GPS and at the same time contribute to TTN coverage mapping, you simply activate the [TTNmapper integration](https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/docs/applications/ttnmapper/) in TTN Console. The formats *plain* and *packed* generate the fields `latitude`, `longitude` and `hdop` required by ttnmapper.
Note: all settings are stored in NVRAM and will be reloaded when device starts. To reset device to factory settings press button (if device has one), or send remote command 09 02 09 00 unconfirmed(!) once.
device answers with it's current configuration. The configuration is a C structure declared in file [main.h](src/main.h#L13-L31) with the following definition:
see file <AHREF="https://github.com/cyberman54/ESP32-Paxcounter/blob/master/LICENSE">LICENSE.txt</A> in this repository. Refer to each individual source file for more details.
