*Data Point* Data Collection on Vacation

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In this data point, frank notices a unique data collection

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device while on holiday in Hilton Head, South Carolina.

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Well, hello, LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, Twitch,

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and Twitter or X or whatever it's called

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this week. My name is Frank Lavinia. And I am

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Juan. I'm on vacation in

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Hilton Head, South Carolina. And one of the things

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that happened was hurricane

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ran through here. But fortunately, by the time IoT got to us, it was

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pretty weak. We didn't lose power. There are a lot of down trees and stuff

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like that, but one of the things

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we were watching, the Weather Channel, apparently Florida got hit really bad, I think

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big Bend, Florida. My thoughts and prayers

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go out to them. It looks like it was pretty badly hit. Could have been

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worse, I guess. But still, a category three hurricane is

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nothing to play games with.

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But the thing I wanted to talk about here, yes,

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maybe it was a category four, you're right. My production assistant here,

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who has been helping me test out the system,

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I'll explain what I'm testing out in a

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so actually, a couple of interesting

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bikes just went by. One of the great things about

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Hildehead Island, aside from IoT being on the sea and all that, is that there's

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a number of bike trails through here, although the sign calls them

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leisure trails because they're not strictly for bikes. People run on them, people

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walk on them, people take their scooters on them,

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et cetera, et cetera. So one of the things I noticed actually a couple of

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days ago, and this proves that I'm always thinking about data, but I guess you

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already knew that. Is there's

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something here I saw in two different places, and I think it's interesting,

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I've seen some variant of these along highways throughout my

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life, but it's called Metro Count.

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And from what I can tell,

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it's bolted to the tree for one. Right. So I did a

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quick actually, the URL is right down there, metrocount.com.

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Not a commercial for Metrocount. I did a quick look

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at their website. Apparently what they do is that they have these sensors in the

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ground, and if you can see them, hopefully you

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can see them. And

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what this does let's see what the other end looks like.

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These are two separate, according to the website, pneumatic

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tubes that are placed about this far apart.

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Sorry. And here goes a bike

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now, kind of see, and for those of you listening to

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this on the podcast, I will be sure to include links and stuff and

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pictures. But

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I've seen this in a couple of places here within this particular resort,

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and I can only guess that they're trying to figure out

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how much use people are getting on the bike trails. I don't know

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why, but it is probably going to be an interesting data point. They have these

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in I've seen at least two places here, these Metro Count

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systems. And I looked at their

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website briefly, and apparently they

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can tell between pedestrians,

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bikes and vehicles like cars.

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Cars and bikes, I think are pretty easy to figure out. Pedestrians, I

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suppose if one gets hit and the other one doesn't,

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they might do that. Plus there's also the timing incident of it. And

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there's actually a pretty lengthy section there.

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The data analytics. The data, they do analytics or they provide

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analytics and presumably an AI model of some sort.

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They can tell you what type of vehicle it is. So

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my junior engineer here

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was running back and forth in this scooter hoping to see would we know,

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right, that's what you were doing, you were trying to see if it registered the

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scooter. So we don't have access to the data that it's

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producing, but we can infer that it could

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probably tell based on the timing and the

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weight. It could definitely tell between bikes. It might even be able to tell between

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kids bikes and adult bikes. Obviously, vehicles

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are going to be much heavier and the timing of it, they can probably,

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based on the distance infer the speed, the

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distance apart. Although since it's not really fixed, you can,

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I guess, mess with the wiring and kind of mess that up. I

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don't know. But I just

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find it interesting that they are collecting this type of data

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on the island and I didn't get to shows you that data is everywhere.

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Right? So just a fascinating look

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kind of at the box, one last look at the box. And

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if anyone within the sound of my voice works for Metro Count, I'll speak

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for Andy here. Usually I don't like speaking for Andy, but I would love to

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have you, I'm sure Andy would too love to have you on the show and

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kind of talk about how this is used and how this works. Obviously nothing

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proprietary, but I would imagine what this is doing is this is

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let's call it what is, right? It's an edge device, right? And it's probably

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I don't see an antenna, but that doesn't mean anything anymore.

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And I left my radio wave detection thing

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at home, which I wanted to

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bring it, but the missus wasn't really into that.

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These are the conversations that engineer families have.

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But I think it's interesting. I'd love to know kind of like so

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I'm assuming that these are some kind of robotic tubes based on what the website

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described. And there's some kind of sensor in there, in here

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that will register probably both timestamp and

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the amount of pressure and weight, potentially. And I lost. There he

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is. Probably that's how they do it. He's jumping over

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it. So if you don't touch any of those, it doesn't register you.

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So I guess a hoverboard, a proper hoverboard like from Back to the Future would

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not register. Although if

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the antigravity pad would do that. So these are the types of

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we're going into nerd territory here. You're going to put a leaf on it. You

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think a leaf will register? Probably not. I don't know. We'll find out.

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Someone's going to be looking at this data and being like, what the heck?

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There's a leaf on this. Assuming it's that sensitive.

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What I'm assuming is happening here, I'm kind of reverse engineering this on the fly,

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is that whatever weight gets pushed on there moves some

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bit of air through the system. That device there

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will register it, presumably to timestamp, too. There's probably

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at least two, I would imagine, right? One for each one. And

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I suppose one measures speed, and the

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other one measures weight. And you have timing. You can kind of figure out

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you can assume the weight. You can infer the weight and get

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the weight, but you can infer the speed based on how that's going.

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So I don't know. I just think it's interesting. It's kind of sad that I'm

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on vacation, and I'm still thinking about data, but I

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didn't choose data life. Data life chose me. So from

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sunny Hilton Head Island. No,

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no, it's good on the vacation. It's just kind of funny that I'm thinking about

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data and stuff like that. But as I said, I didn't choose a data

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life. The data life chose me. And the little one wants to

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go back to the beach. I can't say IoT I blame him. So from Sunny

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we're going to go back to the beach. I promise. This is like the Dunkin

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Donuts episode all over again. All right, just

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just 1 second. I'm going to close this out. So thanks for watching, and thanks

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for listening, because I'm going to make this a data driven episode, too. But I

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just think it's cool, and I just think it's interesting that I'm curious

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how the community is going to use this data. Are they trying to justify the

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maintenance, the upkeep on these things, and they're just trying to get

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raw data on how this is used? How many people do it? I do wonder,

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since E Scooters are technically not allowed, are they going to

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use this to kind of figure out Escooters? I'm not saying

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I know anyone in my family that has an E Scooter with us. I'm not

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saying that. I'm just saying let's put it out there. I wonder if they're trying

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to detect hoverboards and things like that with this system.

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So with that, I'm going to end this

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and signing off from Sunny Hill Head, South Carolina, and