Espressif Shows Off Sensorless ESP-WIFI-CSI "Radar" Human Occupancy, Activity Solution
Designed to detect humans using only interference in Wi-Fi signals, ESP-WIFI-CSI looks impressive — but is exclusive to China, for now.
Embedded computing specialist Espressif has shown off a "human detection solution," which uses Wi-Fi signals to determine occupancy and activity in a room — capturing the data and using it to change a smart lamp's color.
"This is a demonstration of Espressif's new human-detection solution, ESP-WIFI-CSI, which includes an ESP lamp, a router, and the 'Tencent L Link' mini program," the company explains of its brief video demonstration of the system. Espressif chipsets contain up to 306 sub-carrier data signals, [providing] channel frequency responses to sub-carrier signals calculated when packets are received."
It's those responses that provide the secret sauce to the company's "Wi-Fi radar" demonstration. In it, a smart lamp built around an Espressif chipset is calibrated to its environment — taking a baseline reading of the channel status information (CSI) to prepare it for occupancy and activity detection. Once the calibration is complete, the lamp is able to detect when someone enters the room and change its color or brightness automatically.
"When someone enters the room ESP-WIFI-CSI detects activity in the room immediately and the lamp light turns green," the video demo's narrator explains. "When someone sits down and works effectively without moving ESP-WIFI-CSI detects no activity in the room and the lamp turns from green to white, but when the detected person, for example, takes out their mobile phone from their pocket the device senses this movement and the lamp light quickly turns green [again]."
The solution comes with a paired app, providing fine-grained control of the detection from a smartphone — allowing users to trigger calibration, change the sensitivity threshold, and view previously-captured data about activations.
"The ESP-WIFI-CSI human detection solution doesn't need any sensors, it can detect human activities directly over a Wi-Fi connection," the company claims. "What's more, ESP-WIFI-CSI has outstanding advantages in terms of cost, ease of use, and applicability, making it a great application for indoor monitoring security monitoring and other scenarios that require detecting human activities."
There is, however, one minor catch: It's currently available exclusively in China, with no word yet on a global release. Interested parties are advised to get in touch with Espressif through the company's contact form.