The problem JhumriCam solves
We wanted a fun yet functional way to make sense of who’s in the office people, cats, and chaos included.
JhumriCam taps into our office RTSP cameras to:
- 👥 Count how many people are physically in
- 🐈 Detect when our office cat Jhumri makes an appearance
- 🥇 Track who visits the office the most (yes, we made a foodie leaderboard)
- 🤖 Compare predicted lunch attendance (based on 👍 counts) vs actual headcount from the cameras
- 💬 Share all of this via a Telegram bot with /headcount, /start, etc.
Challenges we ran into
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Getting access to RTSP in office.
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Model detection
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RTSP setup with multiple sources: We initially struggled to simulate and test with live camera feeds. As a workaround, we created RTSP streams using MediaMTX and local videos to simulate cameras until real feeds were available.
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Low voltage issues on Raspberry Pi: While experimenting with physical camera setups, we encountered hardware limitations and power drops. Disconnecting peripherals helped stabilize it.
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Python OpenCV + RTSP instability: Handling multiple streams simultaneously required retries, fallbacks, and frame decoding tweaks.
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Telegram bot in group chats: Telegram bots don’t listen to non-command messages in groups, so we implemented slash commands like /headcount and /errorrate to enable functionality everywhere.
Despite the hurdles, we now have a quirky, lovable surveillance companion — powered by Jhumri 🐾
Technologies used