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Density for iOS — See how busy popular places are in real time.
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@rrhoover No need to request anything from anyone with Density... no pics, no videos... An accurate count of density in real time. Hoping @andrewfarah jumps in to discuss.
@rrhoover Crowdsourcing the data was an option but it leaves out a trove of data. So we built a permanent sensor instead that gets affixed to a doorframe. It's anonymous but accurate, scooping up 10s of millions of data points every day.
We analyze that and turn it into a running, real time count of places just like Philz.
@andrewfarah yes! I gathered that from the landing page. Much better solution for the use case I described. :)
@rrhoover mind if I co-opt "travel toward disappointment?" I'll give you author's cred if we ever use it in a super bowl ad :)
Been using this myself for Blue Bottle Coffee for the past few weeks, as our office is in the area. It's been absolutely bulletproof in accuracy.
The app is a perfect execution of a background utility. I never open the app, but the pushes tell me exactly what I need, and that's it. So fantastic.
The only thing I'd wish for (and I'm sure it's coming), is day of the week (since some locations are only relevant on weekends or weekdays)
@ericjorgenson What you haven't mentioned is the integral role you continue to play by peeking out the @Zaarly windows on our behalf...
https://twitter.com/andrewfarah/...
@andrewfarah best approach i've seen thus far. Is an api available? Would love to help with distribution too :) CC: @rrhoover
@rrhoover @jmrushworth Thanks! For early partners, yep. If a company helps with distribution, we give them an API.
Email me: andrew AT density.io.
This seems really neat. Would love to see how this progresses!
A while back I built something that helped solve problem for me: going to a coffee shop to work and finding out that it was packed or there weren't any seats. (http://arethereseats.com/). Perhaps there's an opportunity to integrate or work together some how. I just want to find places with an empty seat to work from :)
@iwaffles You should really check out @darrenbuckner and @juellez 's product http://www.producthunt.com/posts...
re: Are there seats - that's awesome! We'd be happy to install in several of those locations and kick the data back to you. Particularly Jane. That place can get crazy.
I should also mention that measuring the number of seats requires hyper-accurate count. A place might feel quiet even when all the seats are taken. Know what I mean?
@iwaffles RE: "I just want to find places with an empty seat to work from" — I know this feeling well. We've partnered with Density to give folks that inside look at select venues in Portland (to start). https://workfrom.co/live
@talantorriero The cool thing about bars is that the data could be used in another way. Users looking for a trending place instead of a quiet one.
This is a fantastic idea. I'd love to see the hardware... How is it powered? POE? How granular could it get, multiple rooms w/in a single location? Is it available to be privately/internally used?
This could be so cool for public transit as well, how many people went through a turnstile? Maybe I should just walk... etc.
So many questions! Can't wait to play.
GREAT job @andrewfarah
@jsneedles At the moment, we run 18 AWG wire to the closest outlet (through super suave and discreet channeling). Until, of course, @meredithperry let's us include uBeam with all our installs. And we use wifi for data transfer. Eventually, we'll just use @amirhaleem's Helium :) cc @pharkmillups.
- One sensor is bi-directional. So for any standard 36-42in doorframe, we get pretty much every entrance and exit with a single sensor. Double doors, we'll do one on each side and then normalize.
- As granular as the number of sensors you deploy. Multi-room, sure. There are limitations to the system, like we need to install at all main entrances / exits for a location but the sensor is so cheap that it allows us to do so sustainably.
- Private usage. Sure. For example, we've had conversations with some companies that have corporate campuses and a shit time trying to schedule who gets what conference room... would be nice to show them all rooms in real time. Actually, UC Berkeley is doing some Density installs so their students can see their gym and possibly their libraries live "busyness." Eventually we'll get to some fun predictive stuff.
- Public Transit. Exactly. Too many places. The tough part has been where to start.
Sensor --
Weird, keep getting an "Invalid email" while trying to signup error. But this seems super cool.
@srcasm Try logging in with the email you tried to sign up with. We're looking into this issue. Shoot me a note at ben@density.io if that doesn't work!
I just hunted this SceneTap (http://scenetap.com/).. similar but you can see the Guy-to-girl ratios at the bar before you go @rrhover.So if you are going out with your guys you don't end up at a sausage fest.. hahah
I love these types of apps super useful, Density has pretty simple design too well done @andrewfarah!
@rrhover @andrewfarah @jackosutherland I don't think SceneTap is operating anymore. I loved the premise but it's difficult to scale that business considering they install cameras in every location.
@jackosutherland @adamarice Yeah and you run the risk of off-putting people with privacy concerns.
@adamarice @andrewfarah Yeah I wasn't sure. Was cool when it was introduced before but you are right definitely hard to scale. Good luck with Density will be waiting patiently for it to be on Android and in Chicago!
I love the user experience for setting up a new account and enabling GPS/notifications. Any plans on expanding to the east coast? :)
@cbeck527 So many plans to expand... :). And we'll do so faster if you start requesting places in NYC!
Super excited to be an investor, and to have seen Density come so far -- literally from upstate new york! Their original LAUNCH Festival demo: https://youtu.be/yRGa9-QUDWo
... just awesome iteration by an awesome team.
@jason Literally from upstate new york :). FWIW, Density wouldn't exist without @jtriest, @jason, @brettdem, @ClarkValberg, @Billy_Draper and our 65 other amazing investors.
This would be incredible in a hospital. It also would be able to give more accurate appointment times. How long till anyone can install one?
@jasonzopf Honestly, if you know a hospital... let's talk.
andrew AT density.io
Product Hunt,
I'm Cofounder / CEO.
At first, we just wanted to know if our coffee shop was busy. Then we thought, how cool would it be to see a whole city moving from our phone?
So that's what we're trying to do without scraping personally identifiable information (video surveillance, facial recog, etc). To get the data we're after you'd have to build and distribute (to tens of thousands of locations) a sensor that was real time, anonymous, accurate, and cheap.
If it broke one of those four tenants, the system wouldn't work. And we'd fail to achieve our goal of giving people an API for human movement.
Today, we could really use your feedback on two things:
1. Where could this be useful to you? What locations? (you can request in app)
2. What could we do better? (app, function, design, explanation, etc...)
Your feedback is enormously helpful. Thank you!
Density Sensor --
@andrewfarah Cool product. I've been intrigued by this space for a while now & I've seen a lot of failed attempts. But this looks promising.
Questions: Have you experienced any push back from merchants of popular venues more likely to have longer queues? I can see how this data would be valuable for venue-owners long-term, but initially are they afraid tools like Density will cause deflection at peak times? Also, would venues like this show 'high traffic' all the time?
Thanks!
@andrewfarah how does the app find locations? Does it hook into an external API like GMaps for Foursquare? When I was searching for a place to request, I was looking for some suggested places close to my location. An attribution line a la old style instagram:
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would make me sure that the data is accurate.
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would make me sure that the data is accurate.@lindzora That's a really good question.
Couple things.
- Merchants have pretty crazy peaks and valleys; super busy for an hour then really quiet. They've told us they'd prefer a more even distribution throughout the day. Something we can do.
- Coupa Cafe, one of our locations, actually asked for the "reverse Density" for his managers. They want notifications when Coupa is swamped so they know to put more people on the floor and address the line faster. A sort of on-demand staffing.
- Loyal customers are loyal regardless. They just want to know the best time to show up. In fact, many times, they already know anecdotally. @rrhoover and Philz Golden Gate is a great example. I'm sure you probably have a place or two like that as well.
- re: High Traffic, Even with the most popular places, like Blue Bottle Coffee, there is always a slow time. And certain days are dramatically different from others.
Personally, I'd actually like to see this in places I hate going to as well... like the DMV.
@cbeck527 Welp... we should probably do attribution. Thanks for that! We backfill locations using Foursquare.
And then when someone requests a location with that fun "slide to request" bit we store the location data ourselves and keep a running tally of how many votes for a place there have been.
The cool thing is... this sort-of-straightforward / really simple feature does three things:
1. It identifies which locations we should target next.
2. Demonstrates to a merchant there's actual demand for Density. In other words, how many existing customers would be made happy by installing us.
3. When a "requested location" comes online, we notify those who asked for it. Making them smile and driving engagement.
@lindzora @rrhoover @andrewfarah Congrats, really interesting idea. I like the "reverse Density" idea in particular, I think it could play really well with ShopKeep. Have you looked in integrating with any Point of Sale?
this is really cool - i haven't read the previous comments, but you did a really good job with using a simple solution to a common problem/issue. with hoothere, i was kind of trying to do this with events/parties, but this is even more simplified/more useful in everyday life and requires pretty much no effort (because, like you said, it travels human movement in and out, and no one needs to have the app for it to be useful).
like the fact that if a coffee shop here in NC installed this and i was the only one who knew about it, and that id still benefit so much from it, makes this awesome.
This is incredible! I've been looking for an app like this for a while. When you have enough historical data, will you show how traffic varies at locations over time?
Here's a sample use case where that would be helpful. When I'm picking lunch/dinner/coffee places to meet someone in an unfamiliar area, I'll often use Yelp. But I also want to get a sense of how the busy the place is at that time so we're not waiting too long. To do this, I'll cmd+f the yelp reviews page for "wait" or "line", and read what people say, which isn't a great experience.
It would be awesome to look at quantitative historical data and pick places which aren't generally busy at times I'm interested in, or vice versa. Just giving a single use case data point here, not sure how broadly it applies :)
@malinkawal Yeah. We even think there's a market for segmented historical traffic. Like... I'm a real estate developer, "Show me the foot traffic for calendar year 2015 January through March in San Francisco's Financial District."
re: cmd+f-ing the yelp reviews, I do this for the wifi at places. What we'd really like to do is just give Yelp our data. Much like SinglePlatform does for Foursquare's menus.
(whoops, meant to reply to the footer year comment)
I've found this helpful, a snippet of code for dynamic timestamps so you never have to remember :)
http://updateyourfooter.com/
@malinkawal "Friends Don't Let Friends Look Dead On The Internet", haha. This is clever.
@andrewfarah Requiring hardware installation limits scalability, though I like this solution more than others that I've seen because it's cheap and looks pretty lightweight overall. Isn't it possible to do something similar with only software (i.e. some combination of BLE/GPS/mesh networks)?
@adamarice We're not ruling out combining data. But the base set gets really hard to "own" and sell when it's derived from combos of other platform data. The product would also harder to defend / easier to replicate, and worst case we open ourselves up to being sherlocked by said platform / (like meerkated by Twitter)-
Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/She...
/// Despite this, "Sherlocking" has become an accepted term used within the Mac and iOS developer community for Apple announcing a new system feature that seems similar to an existing third-party application. //
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