Kitchen Queue
- Idea
- Design
- Build
- Shipped
- In use
Our canteen line is long at lunch and nobody knows whether to go now or in ten minutes. Kitchen Queue uses a camera that's already there, counts the people in line with computer vision, and shows a live count, a wait estimate and a "typical for this weekday" chart that tells you whether waiting helps.
Only one number leaves the building every 10 seconds. The live picture is optional and stays behind an access code. The demo uses made-up numbers. The real version is meant for the school's cameras, so its code is private.
1Key Specifications
- Counting
- YOLO, MobileNet-SSD or HOG with OpenCV, on whatever PC sees the camera
- Server
- Python standard library, live updates over Server-Sent Events
- Cameras
- Can use existing Hikvision CCTV
- Also
- An ESP32 uplink sketch for places without a PC
2Functional Block Diagram
- seeschool camera
- countcounter.py (YOLO / OpenCV)
- send1 number / 10 s, outbound
- servePython + SSE
- showcount, wait, weekday forecast
3Live Demo
4How it works
A small counter script reads the camera stream, counts people in the queue area and posts a number to the server. Everything only dials out, so the school network needs no changes and nothing is exposed. The server keeps 28 days of counts, which is what makes the weekday forecast work.