interesting project - occupancy detection

[Eric]

i've got a project in mind that i'd like to get some opinions on.

i live on the top floor of a three story building. there are neighbors on the second floor and first floor is a business. the second floor neighbors are very noise sensitive (overly so, my landlord concurs). i keep pretty quiet, but tip toeing around my own abode all the time is tiring. im trying to devise a system so that alerts me when the downstairs apartment is vacant so i'll know when its ok to let my noise guard down.

the way i see it, i'd need 2 sensors to detect movement and direction (whether people are incoming or outgoing). either the IR sensor or tag could do the trick. then code up something that keeps track of the stack, if someone leaves, pop off, when someone comes in, pop in. if it detects that there's a zero state (ie no people in the building), then i could send an alert to my phone or hook it up to IFTTT to have it turn on a light or something.

it's not a perfect system because if more than one person enters the building at the same time, then the sensors will only record it as one event. if 3 people enter and one leaves, the system would incorrectly think the building was empty. the way to get around that would be to install a more granular motion detector, like in a convenience store when you enter and trip the laser line and it goes "bing bong". that seems like overkill though, not to mention hard to do wirelessly and conspicuous.

ive also thought about motion detection through images, but that also runs into the problem of multiple people entering being detected as a single person.

does anybody have any thoughts on how i can improve this project?

thanks!

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