Our tech
Quodus puts a sensor on the ceiling of each space and reads what actually goes on under it: how many people are in a room, which desks are really free, whether an office is in use. Measured, not estimated, and reduced to a count or a state before anything leaves the room.
Rich
Room by room and desk by desk: a count for every room, a state for every place, and whether each office is in use.
Accurate
Counted in the room itself, not estimated from the Wi‑Fi or from a total kept at the door.
Useful
Read against the timetable that already lives in your SIS, scheduling or timetabling software, so every number answers a question somebody is asking.
01The three sensors
A classroom wants to know how many people are in it, a library which desks are free, an office only whether anyone is there. They are different questions, so each space gets the sensor that answers its own, and all three report to the same platform.
Classrooms, laboratories, seminar rooms
What it measures
How it works
A sensor on the ceiling sees the room below it, and a neural network inside the device counts the people in it. Only the number leaves the room, and nobody walking the corridor is counted.
How it comparesLibraries, study rooms
What it measures
How it works
A sensor above a shared table sees every place at it. The neural network on the device looks for a person and for what is on the desk, so a place kept by a laptop reads as passively used, not free.
How it comparesOffices and staff spaces
What it measures
How it works
It picks up movement in the office and reports whether it is in use or free: the one answer an office needs, from the same installation and on the same platform as the other two.
02People counting
A timetable says who should be in a room. The people counter says who is: it counts the people in each room every five minutes, and nobody outside it.
Used in Classrooms, laboratories, seminar rooms
On the ceiling, the sensor looks down at the room it is in, and at nothing outside it.
A neural network inside the sensor finds the people in the image and counts them. The image is processed there, in the room.
Every five minutes the count, and only the count, goes to the platform, where it is read against the room's capacity and its timetable.
The Wi‑Fi and a counter at the door are the usual alternatives to a sensor in the room. Each answers a slightly different question, and neither answers it well. This is what each one actually counts.
| Wi‑Fi analytics | Door counter | Quodus | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it counts | Devices connected to the access points | People crossing the doorway, in and out | People in the room |
| Counts people, not devices | No | Yes | Yes |
| Tells one room from the next | No | Yes | Yes |
| Reads an empty room as 0 | No | No | Yes |
| Accuracy | Low: an estimate from devices, not a count of people | Falls through the day, as missed passes add up | High, and validated |
| How often, and how | All the time, as an estimate across the floor | All the time, as a running total that drifts | Every five minutes, counted from zero |
A door counter adds whoever comes in and takes away whoever goes out, so every pass it misses stays in its total: over the day the figure drifts, and an empty room can still read as occupied. The Wi‑Fi never reaches zero at all, because the corridor and the street keep their devices on. The Quodus count is taken from zero at every reading, so an empty room reads 0 and a miscount never carries over into the next one.
Wi‑Fi access points hear devices, not people, and cannot tell one room from the next: their estimate warms and cools across the floor, and goes on counting the corridor and the street when every room is empty. A sensor in each room counts the people in it every five minutes, and nobody outside it.
Sensor reading12:00
Academic data Attendance against enrollment, faculty by faculty.
Select a time or a takeaway to jump to it.
Other solutions
Wi-Fi estimates activity
Building-level device estimates
Quodus counts people
Room by room, every 5 minutes
03Desk occupancy
The desk sensor is for the spaces where a place can be kept without being used, and not for every room: a classroom is counted, not read desk by desk. Above a shared table it sees every place, and the neural network on the device reads both the person and the desk. That is what lets it say which places somebody is using and which are only being kept.
Used in Libraries, study rooms
An infrared sensor at each desk and a counter at the door both detect people, and only people. At a library table that leaves out every desk kept by a laptop or notes, so both read those desks as free.
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.
| IR sensor | People counter | Quodus | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it detects | People at each desk | People coming in and going out | People, and what is on each desk |
| Knows which desk | Yes | No | Yes |
| Sees a desk kept by a laptop or notes | No | No | Yes |
| Free desks it reports at this table | 5 | 5 | 2 |
Counting people is the right answer for a classroom, and it is how Quodus counts classrooms too. At a desk it is the wrong one: a student walking up to a desk with a laptop on it wanted to know that before setting off.
04Privacy
The two sensors that see, the people counter and the desk sensor, process the image inside the device with a neural network of their own. What leaves the room is what they found in it: a count, or the state of each place. Nobody is identified, and nothing in the reading could say who anybody was.
In the room
What leaves the room
U actively used · P passively used · F free
Nothing else.
The image is read where it is taken: the neural network that reads it is inside the device, on the ceiling of the room.
A number for a room, a state for each place, in use or free for an office. That is all any of the three sensors sends.
The reading says how many and where, never who. People walking along the corridor are not counted at all.
05Security
Universities review every vendor that touches their network and their data. Quodus arrives with that work already done.
Our information security management is certified against the international standard for it.
Compliant by design: no personal data leaves the room, and the platform is run in line with the GDPR.
The Higher Education Community Vendor Assessment Toolkit, answered in full, for your IT and procurement teams.
Request the HECVAT06Installation
We manage the installation, and there is little to manage. The sensor runs on 5 V DC, extra-low voltage: it goes on the ceiling, joins the Wi‑Fi the campus already has, and starts reading.