After the pressure switches proved out to be not a viable sensor for detecting what stair a person was on, I started to look at the AMG8833 module. I had a couple in the workshop from past projects (people counting) and so it was free to prototype. After some initial testing, I am beginning to think it will be good solution. My alternative is a laser point sensor, but the beam is too narrow and from some initial tests it has a hard time tracking a human accurately.
The resolution is 8×8 so to be able to achieve one row of pixels per stair I will have two use two aligned sensors. This shouldn’t be an issue, but still need to iterate on this to achieve full coverage, and to get the data into Home Assistant. More to come.
