I have put aside my plan to build a case for the bench sensor and people counter hardware setups, and have spent time debugging the power issue with my bench sensor. It is running out of battery too quickly. After some probing, I narrowed the issue down to the NodeMCU being the problem, but I am still looking into how it can consume less power.
My progress is on schedule, but I would like to resolve the power issue soon. •
I am hoping to have a plan for fixing the power issue.
I have already verified the IR sensors by measuring my distance from them and reading the output voltage levels to verify that they work within the range they were advertised (100-550cm). I used equipment available in the ECE Lab of Hammershlag. I look to re-verify the accuracy of the bench sensor module detection algorithm by running 10 trials of someone arriving, 10 trials of someone leaving, and 10 trials of someone using the machine with a water break and with obstacles in the background.