Supernova Award Category

The Problem

We came up with our first IoT solution for the Essence Festival. The challenge was that the fire marshal wanted to shut us down after we hit the capacity of the venue, which happened early on in the day. The issue was that people were leaving and we wanted to let others in. That led to the challenge of finding a way to figure out the total headcount in the venue at any given moment. If 10,000 people left we wanted to be able to let in 10,000 more, but you can’t manually track that data. 

The Solution

To solve this problem, we built optical “turnstiles” equipped with sensors that monitor foot traffic coming both in and out of the gates. We needed a way to aggregate and make sense of the data in real-time to assure the fire marshal that the festival was complying with capacity requirements. We used Mendix to build our core ERP system and the platform’s ability to consume REST services gave us an idea: we could make the sensors totally anonymous using REST calls to pull the data into a Mendix app and then visualize the data in real-time. Within a week we had the first version up and running. Once we had all the raw data in, we could do things like visually chart throughput per hour. The real-time attendance and foot-traffic data can be used to optimize everything from staffing levels to food and beverage orders to sponsor placement.

The results

To our surprise, no one in our industry (event production and management) had developed a way to know how many attendees were inside of a venue at any given time.  Creating the bi-directional optical turnstiles was really very simple.  What you can do with that count data once it’s obtained--anything from scaling staff up and down to adjusting catering numbers--that’s the clever part of the solution.

Metrics

The safety benefits that the system adds to an event is difficult to quantify.  But the effect of its implementation on the bottom line is very easy to gauge. For instance, being able to tell a fire marshal exactly how many people are in a venue at any given time allows our clients to sell more tickets and permit more people to enter the event by controlling the flow in and out of the entrances and exits with a high level of precision.  Until now, all we could really do was take a visual and try to determine, “How’s the venue feel? Do we think this is too crowded?” 

In one instance, the fire marshal was limiting a promoter to selling only 2,000 tickets.  By installing our system for this event, and demonstrating that we can accurately show how many people are in the venue at any given moment, the promoter was allowed to sell 2,500 tickets.  At nearly $200/ticket X 500 tickets, our system provided our client with a revenue swing of nearly $100K on a single night!

The Technology

Solomon’s fabrication and electronics departments custom built optical turnstiles equipped with sensors. We used the Mendix Platform to build the app that visualizes all of the data. 

Disruptive Factor

One of our challenges has been convincing people that the system provides accurate information.  Figuring out the algorithm and logic that each turnstile uses to monitor the first and second optical sensor was a time-consuming process.  For example, what if someone walked into the turnstile and turned around?  What if the line got backed up and someone stood in the middle of the sensors for a long period of time?  All of these issues had to be considered and dealt with in the code on board.  We had several of our team members help us test the system by walking through the turnstiles in circles, at various speeds, etc. while we watched what the logic was doing so we could tweak the system and effectively address these kinds of scenarios. 

Previously, getting an accurate count of how many people attended an event was a painstaking process of gathering handwritten tabulation sheets and performing calculations.  That’s a process that, realistically, can only be done perhaps once every hour.  Now, we’re able to put this critical information directly into the hands of key stakeholders in real time.

Shining Moment

This solution is being used at some of the largest festivals in the U.S., like Essence and Coachella. And I was able to build the app in only a weeks’ time with no coding background using Mendix.