AK9753 - Human Presence Sensor

[hek]

Have anyone tried the AK9753?

https://www.sparkfun.com/products/14349

[Nca78]

I saw the AK9752 on Arrow when searching for something else and had a look at the product line. I was very excited when reading about a "human presence detection" sensor but I felt disappointed after some reading.
First disappointment is right in the introduction, you should not expect a great detection range from it :
The AK9753 is suitable for several feet human detector by using external lens

From what I see it's just a combination of 4 thermopiles, that each give you an average temperature in their field of view, so as soon as you're a few meters away the averaging in the area you are in will give a value too low to be sure there is really a human. And it's just not usable for me when temperature is often 30°C or more
I guess it can be efficient for things like counting people passing a door as it's short range and it gives information about the direction. But at 25$ for a 2x2 array I would go for a 40$ GridEye and its 8x8 array.

[dbemowsk]

@nca78 sounds like it isn't that much better than a PIR detector, outside of the fact that it can detect direction of travel.

[gohan]

I think there is no way a cheap sensor can actually make a precise measurement to detect humans in a room, but a system with that kind of sensors and a image processing device it could make a more reliable solution, but would go in the expensive solutions.