Open Forum

I know of at least one museum that has people get tickets online or at the front desk, even though all their exhibitions are free. I'm not sure what the costs associated with it are, but if you already have an online (and in person) ticketing system, this could work.
We had a similar situation as you but are so small that the visitors HAD to see the exhibit - even if not necessarily engaging with it. The granting organization told us to count ever visitor.

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Katherine Burlison
Chief Curator
Hermann-Grima & Gallier Historic Houses
New Orleans LA
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Years ago, at a different institution, to solve this same problem I bought an infared people counter. It's similar to what many retail places use to see how many people are coming into their stores. It simply plugs in and shines an infared beam across the doorway and a couple feet off the ground. Whenever that beam is interruped by a person crossing, it registers a count. When they leave, it registers another count. So, dividing by two gets you really close to the amount of people who came in. 

It's imperfect, of course. If two people cross at nearly the same time, they may be counted as one. And staff counts as much as visitors, so you may want to take that into account. 

That said, if you need a good estimate, this gets you very close at minimal cost and effort. 

I did a quick Google search and came up with this: https://peoplecounting.pro/us/product/smart-counter-plus-with-reset-key-us/. Anything similar should do the trick. 

Best of luck!

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George Garner (he/him/his)
Assistant Director & Curator
Civil Rights Heritage Center - Indiana University, South Bend
South Bend IN
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Hi Mary-
We are working with two different camera-based solutions that provide information on our gallery activity.

Trafsys Overhead 3D people counter https://www.trafsys.com/spectrum-3d-people-counter/

These cameras are mounted over the gallery doors and can sense the direction the visitor is traveling. The data they gather is anonymous, so you can't tell when visitor x entered and left, but you can tell that 6 people entered at 12:01 and 4 people left at 12:02.  The system can also correlate data from multiple cameras as well as external factors such as weather as well as day of week and time.

Most recently we have begun experimenting with Cisco Meraki cameras connected to our Cisco network.  These cameras are independent of a particular supporting software system so there are a number of vendors as well as open source options when it comes to providing visitor tracking data.  These cameras and associated software are capable of much more than the Trafsys system including visitor paths, dwell-time, gender, age and even emotional state.  We have defined limits on what data we will allow the vendor and staff to have access to from these cameras in order to maintain visitor anonymity and to align with our privacy policy. The software we are currently experimenting is called https://www.splashaccess.com/
Here are a few videos that show some features of these cameras:

https://apps.meraki.io/en-US/apps/380730/presence-orb---mv-sense

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZc0fAHMxkY

Best,
Scott

Scott Sayre Ed.D.| Chief Digital, Information and Education Officer |Corning Museum of Glass
One Museum Way | Corning, NY 14830 | www.cmog.org | Phone: (612) 423-9691

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Scott Sayre
Chief Digital Officer
Corning Museum of Glass
Corning NY
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