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Opensensing helps put the ‘Smart’ in Unearth Whyalla’s New ‘Smart’ Jetty

On Wednesday 16 September, 2020, Unearth Whyalla’s new smart jetty was officially opened to the public by Whyalla City Council’s Mayor Clare McLaughlin and SA Premier Steven Marshall.

The jetty – the only one of its kind in the southern hemisphere is not only architecturally and aesthetically stunning, but uses LoRaWAN devices and The Things Network to collect real-time people counting data of jetty traffic (refer to Figure 1).

Opensensing was proud to be involved with this project by supplying three pre-configured people counters (one radar and two WiFi sensors) and a LoRaWAN gateway ready for local installation and deployment. The PCR2 LoRaWAN Radar People Counter Bi-directional is designed for outdoor use and uses radar signals to provide a privacy protecting camera-less solution to people counting. Utilising LoRaWAN technology, this sensor transmits data at regular intervals and being bi-directional can register people passing by from the left and right (see photos below).

Together with other project partners, Four, Simply City and Aquest Electrical, the Whyalla Jetty Counting Project is the first project of its kind on Eyre Peninsula and expands the footprint of the community-based The Things Network.

Figure 1: This is a screen grab of data collected over the first four days after the jetty was opened showing peaks of around 130 people on opening day and the first Friday night. The green line is the jetty end and the blue line is the jetty middle. Each counter has a range of up to 50 metres enabling a good count of the whole jetty (Source: Whyalla City Council).

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