SDRPF & Gristle King People Counter

[curiousfokker]

Project:
SDRPF People Counter

Elevator Pitch:
The San Diego River Park Foundation, a local non-profit, has a large parcel of land at the end of a rugged 5 mile trail in the San Diego backcountry. This parcel is home to protected plant species. The entrance to the parcel is off of a heavily trafficked public trail, the El Cajon Mountain Trail. Current indicators (footprints, trash, etc) indicate some amount of trespass onto the SDRPF parcel.

Gristle King Inc, in conjunction with the San Diego River Park Foundation and Lake Street Software (creator of HeliumVision and a software provider) will source, assemble, install, and maintain a trail traffic system monitoring local trail use on public and private trails.

This LoRaWAN system will consist of "people counters" using either infrared or radar technology to count the number of people using any given section of the trail. These people counting devices will use nearby Helium Hotspots (gateways) to pass traffic through to internet in order to make the data available for interested parties, including private and government agencies as well as the public.

A successfully installed system will allow local public and private agencies to monitor authorized and unauthorized trail use and develop data-backed land management policies. Additionally, it will serve as a useful template for parks and Hotspot owners globally to collaborate in the planning and use of a people counting system to monitor trail traffic.

Total fiat/hnt ask:
US$14,000
To be used for purchase of equipment and development of software.
Gristle King Inc & installers will work pro bono.

Name and Address:
Gristle King Inc

3275 Adams Ave, Ste A
San Diego, CA 92116

Team or Project website:
www.gristleking.com
www.sandiegoriver.org
Lake Street Software: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nhough/
El Capitan Country Preserver: https://www.sdparks.org/content/sdparks/en/park-pages/ElCapitan.html

Team or projects social:
@thegristleking on Twitter
youtube.com/c/GristleKing
https://www.facebook.com/SanDiegoRiver
https://www.youtube.com/user/sdrpf
https://twitter.com/sandiegoparks

Code Repos of team or key applicants:
-Nik Hawks at Gristle King Inc was voted Most Valuable Community Member in 2021 and has worked tirelessly to promote Helium use and education.
-San Diego River Park Foundation is a mature local non-profit with the vision to protect and enhance the River’s valuable natural and cultural resources and encourage communities to embrace this legacy and to celebrate it with the creation of a river-long park system.
-Nick Hough at Lake Street Software developed HeliumVision.

Project Details:
Using grant funds, Gristle King Inc will purchase off the shelf people-counting hardware from vendors, prepare and install the hardware, and work with the SDRPF and LSS to provide useful information to SDRPF as well as local public gov’t agencies (San Diego County Parks) at 12 key points along the trail.

Trail use in San Diego can be heavy. Specific to this project there is a 4 way intersection deep in the park (5 miles up a rugged trail.) At this intersection, users can go 3 of the 4 ways legally. The 4th option is to trespass on private land. Currently, no one knows how much trespassing is being conducted. Trespassing puts visitors inside a protected nature preserve with rare species and plants, some of which (Lakeside Ceanothus) are found in the greatest concentration in the world on this specific preserve, and almost nowhere else.

Adding counters closer to the trailhead and along the trail will help assess how much use the trail gets and how far the average visitor goes. This is known as the most difficult trail in San Diego County. Putting numbers to that (not just the number of annual rescues) could help secure funding to make the trail safer and more accessible to future users.

This information would be made public through the LSS UplinkVision software. A very rough sketch of the dashboard might look like the following. The black line is the trail, blue marks are sensors placements, bar chart on top tracks traffic.

Once this project delivers objective trail use reports, both the SDRPF and the local County Parks agency can make informed decisions on how to best manage traffic patterns and trail use.

Images & Video
Current Helium Hotspot coverage of the parking lot area (S1 on the proposed dashboard above)

Proposed S2 spot on Trailside Information Kiosk

Proposed S5 spot to Measure Alternate Trail Use

Current Helium Coverage (via GLAMOS testing along the trail)

Storytelling
This project can serve as an inspirational and instructional model for other parks, both public and private. The free and openly accessible Gristle King blog will provide step by step instructions on how to approach landowners, what to offer and ask for, how to manage this type of project, and how to install, maintain, and make use of the Helium Network in a typical park "off grid" application.

In addition to a detailed blog post, Gristleking will craft a video for a wider, general audience that captures high quality images and video of the development process, deployment in the field, community impact, and illustrate the promise of the Helium's LoRaWAN network. Major content components of this rich content include:

• Introduce LoRaWAN as a solution for public works / green initiatives.
• Outline the key advantages of LoRaWAN and why this protocol is uniquely suited for this application / use case.
• Explain the importance of data-backed land management policies and extrapolate the impact of using LoRaWAN IoT solutions to address a larger public good (eg. “if we can solve this at a local level… the impact globally is significant because…”).
• Outline how we built a relationship with the San Diego River Park Foundation and how to collaborate with similar institutions.
• Explain the major steps taken to go from identifying a problem / opportunity to deploying the solution and measuring success.
• Acknowledge the grant program as a lever that helped bring this project to life.
• Involve the San Diego River Park Foundation.

Roadmap:

Milestone + Date	Deliverable	Summary	Cost
MS1, March	Purchase Devices	Within 10 days of grant award Purchase of people counting hardware	$11,500 USD
MS2, April	Hardware & Data Testing	Making sure hardware works and data can be onboarded & visualized in the LSS UplinkVision platform Est cost: TBD	$2,000 USD
MS3, May	Mount hardware purchase (poles) and installation, Social Media content creation, Community outreach	Installation of hardware	$500 USD
MS4, June	Report & Debrief	Gristleking blog article detailing what happened and how to do it yourself written and published on the project with accompanying social media push (Twitter, YouTube, etc) SDRPF article written (by Nik or SDRPF) for their website. Storytelling video about Helium's LoRaWAN network.	$1,000 USD

[JessmFromEarth]

Hey thanks so much for submitting this grant proposal to us, our team will look into reviewing your application as soon as can.

In the meantime would you be able to clean up the Markdown in the Milestones section to reflect the templet so it's easier for our team to review.