Free-use spaces
Libraries, study rooms and dining halls have no teaching timetable behind them: they fill on their own and empty on their own. Quodus counts every place separately and tells the person sitting there from the coat, the notes or the laptop keeping an empty seat, and where there are no desks, as in a dining hall or an open area, it counts the room. That difference is what decides whether you need to open another room or simply free the one you already have.
Central LibraryReading room 2
Last update: 1 min ago
13 of the 24 taken places are passively used: things on the desk, and nobody sitting there
01The spaces
A classroom gets booked and a laboratory gets booked. A library does not. These spaces fill in the order people arrive, their real capacity moves through the day, and nobody signs for their use, so the only way to know how they are doing is to count them as it happens.
The rooms that fill hardest at exam time, and often open around the clock. A place held with a book can sit empty for hours while another student walks around looking for one, and three in the morning looks nothing like six in the evening.
A whole day of demand pressed into two hours. Here what holds the table is a tray, and the midday peak is handled far better knowing how many places are free at each moment.
A gym, a common room, a hall between lectures: any open space people use as they please. There are no desks to read, so the sensor counts the room against what it holds, and the student sees how busy it is before walking over.
02What we measure
A counter on the door says how many came in. A turnstile says how many went through. Neither knows that the table at the back has been held by a folder for two hours. The ceiling sensor reads every place separately, which is why it can say three things where the others say two.
Three states, not two
The sensor picks up at once whether somebody is sitting there and whether anything is on the desk. A free place is empty, an actively used place has a person in it, and a passively used place has notes, a book or a laptop and no one at all. That third state is the one no other system sees, and in a full library it is most of what looks occupied.
The clock on the place
From the moment the person stands up, the place is passively used and starts counting. Past 30 minutes it stops being a coffee break and the platform flags it, and the institution's own policy can release it so somebody else can sit there. In this room the place kept longest has been waiting 2h 14m.
Rooms without desks
Not every free-use space has desks to read. In a dining hall or an open area the same ceiling sensor counts the people in the room against what it holds, every five minutes, so the student sees how full it is before walking over and the manager sees when the midday rush really starts and ends.
An absolute count, not a running total. Every reading counts who is in the room now, from nothing. A counter at the door adds whoever comes in and takes away whoever goes out, and every pass it misses or counts twice stays in its total: over a day it drifts, and it can call a hall half full after it has emptied. A figure that has to be reset to be believed is no use for most of what it is wanted for.
Compared with counting people
A counter at the door and an infrared sensor at each desk both detect people, so a desk kept by a laptop or notes reads as free. In this room they would report 21 free places. There are 8.
Reports 5 free desksDesks 4, 5, and 7 are passively used, and it reads them as free.
3 people in the room
Reports 5 free desksOnly 2 are free.
Detects people and what is on the deskReports 2 free desksDesks 3 and 6, and it knows which ones are being kept.
03The challenges
The three problems these rooms bring are always the same three, and all three are one problem seen from three places: there is no occupancy figure that the student and the manager can both agree on.
The exam calendar, the start and end of programs and the summer timetable change the flow from one week to the next. With nothing measured, the room is sized by how the worst day of the year felt.
Notes, a book or a tray hold a table for hours with nobody sitting there. The room reads as full, the student leaves, and the places are still there.
The library looked quiet yesterday, so the student takes the bus across town, walks in, and every seat is taken. With nothing in real time the trip was for nothing, and the complaint lands with the manager, who has no figure to answer it with either.
04For the student
Few things are as discouraging as a forty-minute bus ride to a library that turns out to be full. The same reading the manager works from is published for the student on the web and on mobile, so it stops being a matter of luck: you check how full every space on campus is, pick the one with room, and the plan shows which places are free before you set off.
Central LibraryReading room 2
Last update: 1 min ago
The student sees how every space stands in real time and decides which to walk to, or whether staying put is the better call.
The plan in the app and on the room display shows which places are free, instead of a full lap of the floor to find out.
The web views carry the opening hours and the services available in each space, gathered in one place.
The panels embed in the corporate site and in the institution app through a web view, without asking the student to install anything.
05The room display
The same information on a screen inside the space does a job the app cannot: it is seen by the person holding the seat. Beside the free places it shows how long each passively used place has had nobody at it, and that presence alone is enough to put most of them back in circulation.
17:42Updated: 1 min ago
Central LibraryReading room 2
Awareness
Nobody has to clear anything away and no porter has to walk the floor. Having the figure in plain sight is enough to bring the average hold down, which is what happens in the rooms where it goes in.
Use of what you have
Every place freed is a place you do not have to build. This room has 13 places in passive use with nobody in them, and past the limit the institution's own policy can hand them back to a student who needs somewhere to sit.
06Room by room
The same count across the campus: every library room, study room and dining hall, day by day, at its busiest hour over the term. People are those sitting at a place; places taken add the ones kept with a bag or a laptop and nobody at them. Side by side, the two say which rooms fill with people, which only look full, and which stay open for a handful.
| Space | Places | Mo | Tu | We | Th | Fr | Sa | Su | Avg | Max |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Central Library · Ground floor | ||||||||||
| Room 1 | 56 | 25% | 26% | 27% | 27% | 21% | 12% | 7% | 21% | 27% |
| Central Library · First floor | ||||||||||
| Room 2Hoarding | 32 | 47% | 49% | 51% | 50% | 40% | 23% | 13% | 39% | 51% |
| Group room | 24 | 14% | 15% | 16% | 15% | 12% | – | – | 14% | 16% |
| Law Library | ||||||||||
| Main room | 90 | 44% | 45% | 45% | 45% | 39% | 27% | – | 41% | 45% |
| Student Center | ||||||||||
| 24 h room | 48 | 22% | 23% | 24% | 24% | 21% | 19% | 17% | 21% | 24% |
| Dining hallNo desks | 48 | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – |
Room 2 of the Central Library: at its busiest hour, 51% of its places hold a bag, notes or a laptop and nobody.
Passive use
The Law Library has every place taken on Tuesday. Yet 45% of its places hold a bag, notes or a laptop with nobody at them: the room is not too small, its places are kept too long. The display in the room and a limit on held places answer that, not a bigger library.
Opening hours
The same table reads the weekends: Room 1 of the Central Library fills 22% of its places at its busiest hour on a Sunday. Opening hours set on the reading keep open the rooms that are used and staff the ones that fill, instead of opening every room for as long as the busiest one.
07Demand and hours
The manager reaches the history by time band, shift, day or week, and reads it against what was happening on campus. That is how you tell a room that is too small from a room that is too small for two weeks a year, which are two very different investment decisions.
Patterns
The history is read next to the events that caused it, and it reads people and places both. This year every place was taken on 2 days, both in exam weeks, and even then only 55% of them had somebody sitting there: a room that looks too small is often a room kept too long.
Export
The historical data and the reports export as CSV and PDF to work in Excel, Power BI or whatever management tool is already in use. The platform does not set out to be the last place the figure lives.
08Outcomes
What changes for the student, for the decisions made about the room, and for how well the room is used.
Student experience
The student checks before setting off, sees the library is full and goes where there is room. Nobody takes the bus across town to find every seat taken, and the complaint that used to land with the manager never gets written.
Decisions
With occupancy in real time, bringing an overflow space into use stops being a calendar decision and becomes a demand decision. The same history sets the opening hours and the capacity each room really needs, rather than how the worst day of the year felt.
Efficiency
Of the 24 places that read as taken, 11 have somebody in them: 46%. Past the limit, the institution's own policy can release a place kept with nobody at it so another student can sit there, and every place that goes back raises that share without building anything.
What a customer says
Quodus allowed us to see the real usage of our teaching spaces and improve efficiency. The data provided by Quodus has been shared with the faculties, enabling them to manage their spaces more effectively. The project is now implemented across all our academic spaces and libraries.
Iñigo SalinasSpace Manager · University of Navarra
09How it works
The same sensor and the same platform that measure the timetabled classrooms. What changes is what gets counted and who the answer is for.
Placed on the ceiling of the space, they pick up each study place separately and detect both the people and the tables held with notes, belongings or trays. The images are processed inside the sensor, nobody is identified, and no personal data leaves the room.
The reading is analyzed on our servers, which monitor the space place by place and work out how long each table has been occupied. Both the live figure and the history come from there.
The student gets occupancy in real time on their phone and on the room displays. The manager gets the indicator board and the history behind the decisions about space and service.
It connects to
And it comes out as