MAC & Cheese is an attempt to monitor building usage using WiFi signals as indicators of the amount of people present. Almost everyone nowadays carries a smartphone, or at least some device connects to a WiFi network for normal operation. These devices, when connecting, or utilizing a WiFi network, are sending signals to a router with information that includes an address that should be unique to the device. This address is the MAC address and is the bases of MAC & Cheese.
Monitoring WiFi signals will be achieved through multiple nodes that will consist of a Raspberry Pi and a WiFi adapter as pictured below:
Each node will simply collect WiFi packets, keep the MAC address and signal strength, throw the rest out, and then send it to a database. This database will maintain only recent MAC addresses and should give a fairly accurate count of how many people are in proximity to the nodes.
The next step, will be to triangulate the unique device based on the signal strength to each node, which will open up a plethora of useful data. Once triangulated only a few nodes can monitor each room in the building and the ability to associate one user with multiple devices becomes possible, which should increase the accuracy of MAC & Cheese.
In short, MAC & Cheese will be able to monitor a whole building, hopefully down to each room, with only handful of nodes. The data provided by MAC & Cheese will be extremely useful to building owners who are interested in learning how their building is used, or even to control heating, cooling, and electrical systems, which can create a more comfortable and environmentally friendly building.
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