One gate standing idle while the next one jams

Half an hour before the doors open, on the turnstile line. Four full-height gates side by side. Through the first one people walk without stopping. The second has bunched up: half a dozen people crowded in front of the reader. The third is closed, with a member of staff standing in front and nobody going through. The fourth is completely empty: nobody has used it at all. And out on the plaza, forty-six people wait their turn for the first two.

CAM-481 · 2 LINES · 1 ZONE · 24 h

What IRIS understands

What it recognizes in this scene

entrance nobody has used
entrance where people go through without stopping
entrance with people bunched up in front
closed entrance with a member of staff in front
line of people waiting their turn
member of staff beside the turnstile line

What this camera gives back

Nobody gets an alert here. Here you get numbers.

31 / minCrossings per minute at the entrance that flows
12 / minCrossings per minute at the jammed entrance
0Crossings at the unused entrance
46People waiting in line
9 minWait at the jammed entrance
3 480People counted on this line

The figures on this screen are an example from the illustration, not any client’s measurement.

IRIS incorporates NeuralPax, a separate license approved by the Centro Español de Metrología — Spain’s national metrology institute — for people counting, occupancy and crowd-flow control. That the figure is right is guaranteed by a third party, not by us: the occupancy figure you show is measured and approved, not estimated. The approval covers that measurement — counting people — not the whole product. That approval is Spanish and it isn’t equivalent to any U.S. certification: we say so up front and not at the end.

How the counting works

Counting isn’t something you ask for. You draw a line.

Each entrance has its own line drawn on the floor of the passage, and the one nobody uses has one too: that’s the line that gives the zero, and the zero is precisely the figure nobody has today. Over the plaza there’s also a painted area saying how many people are waiting and how long they have been there. A line can’t be described in a sentence, it has to be drawn, and that’s why the number is repeatable: the split from one show can be compared with the next without argument. Counting people is the only measurement we hold approval for from the Centro Español de Metrología, Spain’s national metrology institute, and it’s NeuralPax that does it, a separate license built into IRIS. We don’t claim accuracy. We certify it. The approval is Spanish. It doesn’t stand in for a U.S. certification, and we don’t present it as one.

crossing line for the first three entrances · Counting line
crossing line for the unused entrance · Counting line
waiting area · Dwell zone

And also, one rule

You decide once. IRIS applies it always.

one entrance goes five minutes without registering a crossing and another entrance on the same line has more than twenty people waiting

Then

alert the entrance supervisor with the idle entrance and the saturated one
save the video of both entrances at the same minute
log how the crossings split between entrances in the event report

The instruction that set it up«Tell me when a gate has gone five minutes without a single person through and the one next to it has more than twenty people waiting.»

What changes

What changes for whoever runs security at the venue

Half an hour before the doors open. Forty-six people are waiting outside, the second gate has a knot of people in front of it and nobody at all has gone through the fourth. Gaining entry capacity is almost never a building job: almost always it’s spreading better what’s already there. An empty gate next to a jammed one is money standing still and people piling up in the street. IRIS counts how many people go through each entrance and per minute, and shows which one has room to spare and which one can’t cope. With that, the access supervisor moves one member of staff, opens the one that was closed, and the same crowd gets in a good deal faster. Without laying a single brick.

What people usually ask

Can you gain entry capacity without building anything?

Yes, and it’s the usual case. Most venues don’t have too few entrances: they have their entrances badly balanced. IRIS counts the crossings at each one per minute and shows which has room to spare, which is jamming and which nobody is using. Moving one member of staff and opening the closed one is usually worth more than any extension, and it can be decided with the event under way.

Does IRIS open or close a gate by itself?

No. IRIS doesn’t act: it counts and it alerts. Opening an entrance, closing it or sending someone elsewhere is decided by the venue, which knows who comes in where and with which ticket. What changes is that the decision is made with the figure in front of you and at the time, not on the feeling that it looked very full.

Doesn’t the ticket reader already count the same thing?

No, and that’s why it’s useful. The reader counts validations; the camera counts people crossing. When the two figures agree, all is well. When they don’t, there’s an explanation to look for: somebody went through on the same turn as another, a validation opened nothing, or an entrance was left open. The value is precisely in the gap between the two counts.

Other cameras

The real interface, step by step

This isn’t a video. It’s a slice of the real screen.

A summary of the real interface, played hands-free. You see one case from start to finish; what you don’t see are the other screens, and there are many.