Person Sensor by Useful Sensors

Add advanced computer vision capabilities to your project, without the coding! The Person Sensor from Useful Sensors Inc. includes a camera module pre-programmed with algorithms that detect nearby faces, and return information over a simple Qwiic I2C interface. It is designed to be used as an input to a larger system and be treated like any other sensor where power and information are provided through SparkFun’s Qwiic I2C interface. There’s also a separate interrupt pin, TP1, which is used to indicate if any people have been detected.

Internally the Person Sensor bundles an image sensor and a small microcontroller into a single board. It is a small, low-power (~150 milliwatts), and economical hardware module that is capable of detecting nearby faces and returning information about how many there are, where they are relative to the device, and performs facial recognition. This makes it easy to build projects that wake up when people approach, follow their faces, mute a microphone when nobody is present, and even recognize different people to personalize their experiences. The Person Sensor is designed to be a simple way to build smarter devices.

Features

• Qwiic connector for the I2C interface
• Operating Voltage – 3.3V
• 150mW power consumed
• 5mW LED power consumption
• I2C bus speeds of up to 400k baud
• Image Sensor – 110-degree FOV
• Image scan rate – 7Hz with no facial recognition
• Image scan rate – 5Hz with facial recognition active
• Module designed for privacy – resistant to allow access to raw image data, only metadata derived from each frame available.
• Pre-programmed microcontroller – firmware flashing & model updates not available.

Note: The sensor uses an image sensor internally, so you need to make sure that the lens has a clear field of view, and that it’s mounted the right way up. You should be able to see the side of the board that has the sensor by spotting the small lens in the centre. You’ll know you have it the right way up when the silkscreen writing “Useful Sensors Person Sensor V1.0” is at the correct orientation.

Resources

• Developer Guide

Examples

• Auto-Lock your Laptop Screen with a Person Sensor
• Person Sensor Screen Locker
• Person Sensor with Pico C
• Person Sensor with Arduino
• Person Sensor with Raspberry Pi & Python
• Person Sensor with Circuit Python