Sensor Placement That Works

A well-chosen sensor badly placed produces confident wrong numbers. Placement is the part of deployment that installers decide by default and that nobody revisits.

The technical evidence in “Sensor Placement That Works” describes the building, while the effort required to install, test and maintain it is project work. When teams research getting teams to meet deadlines, explore the platform can provide time and project context for that operational effort without replacing the sensor platform as the source of truth for physical occupancy.

Start from the zone, not the device

Decide what each zone is: this bank of desks, this room, this entrance.

For a public, independent reference related to “Sensor Placement That Works”, consult the ISO standards catalogue. Its principles provide a useful check on scope, terminology, governance and the claims made during procurement or review.

Then ask what coverage that zone needs.

Installers work from mounting convenience, which produces coverage shaped by the ceiling grid rather than by the question.

The common placement errors

Cones covering walkways, so passers-by read as occupants.

Sensors above partitions, seeing two zones and attributing to one.

Devices behind obstructions: a monitor, a pillar, a plant.

Entrance counters where a door swings into the field.

And mounting height outside the stated range, which happens in retrofits because the ceiling is where it is.

Walkways and thresholds

The most frequent error and the most damaging, because it inflates everything.

Walk the route a person takes and check whether it crosses a cone.

Where it does, either narrow the field or move the device, and check again after.

Edges and gaps

Every deployment has gaps between coverage areas.

Map them explicitly rather than discovering them in the data.

A documented gap is a known limitation; an undocumented one becomes a conclusion about an empty area that was never covered.

Its own note covers what gaps hide.

Light, heat and air

Sunlight paths change through the day and the year.

Radiators, vents and equipment produce heat signatures.

Draughts move warm air past infrared sensors.

Check at the hours that matter, including a sunny afternoon, not only on the day of installation.

Documenting it

A floor plan with each device marked, its zone, its coverage and its known blind spots.

Kept current when things move.

This document is what makes the data interpretable in two years, and it is the first thing lost when the installer leaves.

Changing the building afterwards

Furniture moves, partitions go up, a room is repurposed.

Each invalidates the placement that was correct before.

Which means a change-control habit: when the floor changes, the sensor map is checked. Without it the data degrades invisibly over about two years.

What to check

Does any sensor cone cross a walkway?

Is there a floor plan marking every device and its coverage?

Have you checked at a sunny afternoon as well as a morning?

And when the furniture last moved, did anybody review the sensors?