In the world of people measurement, there are two real pain points. One is sensor cost, and the other is sensor installation. Yeah - it's all about the sensor. While the price of lidar has fallen significantly (dramatically?) in the past couple of years – especially vis-à-vis raw capability, it’s still expensive. People use Lidar to measure large areas and buying 10+ sensors starts to be painful. Installing those sensor can be even worse (and feels like a lot less value). Installation costs often equal and, with the falling price of lidar, may significantly exceed the cost of the sensors. It’s also, let’s face it, a pretty big hassle to work with installers and string PoE up in the ceiling.
For a retail store or a stadium, there’s plenty of time to recoup that investment. Sure, those sensors might be obsolete in two years, but they’ll be serviceable for at least 5-7 years and probably longer. For an event, though, the cost of sensors (to buy AND install) is usually prohibitive. No matter how much you want crowd management and event analytics, it’s incredibly difficult to justify when you’re only getting data for a few days or even a few weeks a year. Historically, that’s why nearly all of our conversations with event exhibitors and operators went nowhere.
I’ve always believed that there was a real opportunity in the event marketspace. The crowds are intense. The behaviors are complex and interesting. The onsite experience is inherently high-value. Best of all, it’s the kind of location that really rewards full-journey tracking not just occupancy and counting.
But the cost required was always a fundamental barrier.
Within PMY, we’ve been able to do five things that change the equation:
- The Event Kit: This is the biggest. We’ve invested in an “Event Kit” of lidar sensors and processors (and video ML systems too). We can kit out most event spaces with our internal inventory – no purchase necessary. For people who just need measurement for a few days or a week? It’s a game changer. Not only does this save a lot of money and puts the amortization where it should be, it also creates an easier and better installation. We no longer have to deal with different systems or processors or mounts or power because everything is self-contained and ready to go. That means installations go up faster, take less work, and are more reliable.
- Distributed Installation Architecture: Sensor cost is only half the traditional upfront. But we’ve been able to attack the installation costs as well. We’ve architected systems that don’t need wired connections even when the lidar are being fused. We first started doing this for display measurement, but it’s often perfect for events as well. With a distributed architecture, you just plug the sensor into the processor and both into power and you’re done. By avoiding the most difficult and expensive part of installation (pulling cable), we can cut implementation costs by an order of magnitude.
- Remote GUI-based Onboarding: The time it takes to get sensors configured and collecting quality data is a soft cost. But soft costs matter too. Historically, this has been a multi-day process for us – especially in more complex setups (and events can be that). We’ve made considerable strides in every aspect of sensor onboarding and configuration. That includes remote onboarding of sensor inside the platform GUI, inclusion of video sensors with ML in the platform GUI, and deeper integration with the lidar perception layer so that more functionality can be done without our platform. Put all that together, and we’ve significantly reduced setup soft costs and shortened the time to data. In an event environment, that second benefit is often more important than the first. You just don’t have much time to get things running well after sensor install.
- Boots-on-the-Ground: With PMY we can do something we’d just never do at Digital Mortar – put boots on the ground. That means we can often create custom installations and mounts almost on the fly. Things we would never attempt with a 3rd Party installer are doable in an environment where our folks are doing the job, know the technology intimately, and are committed to getting the job done.
- 24-Hour Event Support: And finally, we can cost-effectively provide 24-hour remote support to monitor systems and troubleshoot. In my last post, I talked about the live-wire nature of events and the catastrophic cost of failure, but providing support outside of normal business hours was a terrible strain for us. Now we have support teams in AsiaPac, Europe and (a lot more) in North America that make this process much less painful and a whole lot cheaper.
In our old world, the analytics might have been 5% of the cost of the system even though that’s where all the value ultimately resides. In this world, that cost balance between the analytics and the cost of getting the sensors in is closer to 50-50. That isn’t because the analytics costs have gone up!
With an event kit approach, you can get amazing flow analytics and people measurement on almost any kind of temporary experience for a very reasonable cost. Major exhibitors, conference organizers, brand experiences, live events, and – of course – sporting events. It’s all so much easier and less expensive to do than it was even a year ago.
