Student Spotlight

Tajay Housen
Program of Study: Computer System Technician
Current Year: 2024 Graduating Year
Title of Project: Humber International Student Visitor Tracking and Flow Prediction Using Web cameras Deployment

Tell Us About Your Project or Initiative?

Humber International Centre faced a problem where they were unable to accurately keep count of the number of students entering the department on a daily basis. This is where our project idea came about as they wanted to create an efficient and automated way to accurately capture this data so that management would be able to effectively allocate the correct number of employees on days where traffic in the department is the highest. Our application accomplished this by using two strategically placed web cameras to detect and keep count of the number of students entering the centre and temporarily store this data with the integration of Python and MySQL. After this data was collected, we programmed the application to send an excel report to a predefined email address at 4:30 PM everyday as this is the time the international centre closes. To protect student data, the database is wiped every 24 hours to maintain integrity and confidentiality. The excel reports helped the department to accurately analyse and determine which days or months the office will be most busy and deploy their workforce accordingly.

What Were Some of the Most Important Things You Learned?

The most important thing I learned during my time completing this project is patience. When creating an application heavily dependent on coding there are bound to be errors, especially simple ones that are easily overlooked. I can recall being up until 3 AM in the morning trying to find out why the code wasn’t running or why it ran but was not functioning properly. Through this all, I learned it is important to have perseverance and keep going even when we are faced with insurmountable obstacles.

What Advice Would You Give to Other Students Interested in Your Program?

My advice to other students interested in this program is to ensure you get a firm grasp of the concepts covered in the first and second semester as this will be fundamental in completing your studies. Also don’t hesitate to seek assistance from your professors whenever you encounter difficulty understanding a topic. They are always willing to provide guidance; all you need to do is ask.