Bus Occupancy Display System using ESP32

Nobody likes watching a packed bus roll past the stop — and transport operators have no live view of which buses are full, where the load builds up, or which unit went offline. This project closes that loop. An ESP32 on the bus counts passengers through IR break-beam pairs at the door (in/out), a GPS module geofences the route so counts snap to stops, and a terminus reset zeroes the counters at the depot to correct drift. At the bus stop, a P10 LED matrix shows what passengers actually need: "12A · SEATS FREE: 6 · NEXT: SHIVAJINAGAR · ARRIVING ~4 MIN · STANDEES: 8". The BusSeat Live fleet dashboard shows occupancy along today's route for each bus (a 40-seat bus climbing 0→12→28→34→31→9 across stops), fleet-wide occupancy bars, offline units, and an event log — e.g. "Bus 03C reached seated capacity at Market stop — display shows FULL, 6 standees counted."

1. IR break-beam pairs at the bus door detect each crossing; the break order distinguishes boarding from alighting, and the ESP32 keeps a running net count.
2. A GPS module reports position continuously; when the bus enters a stop's geofence, the current count is snapped to that stop for the route chart.
3. At the depot terminus, a geofence reset zeroes the counters and re-syncs the door sensors, correcting any drift from missed or double counts.
4. The ESP32 publishes occupancy, GPS and stop events to the cloud; the stop-side P10 LED matrix subscribes and scrolls the live seats-free message.
5. The fleet dashboard renders each bus's occupancy bar, the along-route chart with the capacity line, offline flags, and the timestamped event log.
6. When seated capacity is reached, the bus is marked FULL with standees counted separately; the stop display shows this so passengers can decide.

Tech stack:

• ESP32 firmware (door unit + stop display unit)
• IR break-beam sensor pairs
• GPS module (geofencing)
• P10 LED matrix display
• Cloud dashboard (fleet, routes, events)
• MQTT telemetry
• Git

• [Door counting] IR break-beam pairs at each bus door count boardings and alightings; net occupancy = boardings minus alightings.
• [P10 LED stop display] Scrolls the live message passengers need: route, seats free, next stop, arrival estimate, standees.
• [GPS geofencing] Counts snap to stops (Depot, College, Majestic, Shivajinagar, Market); the dashboard shows live GPS coordinates per bus.
• [Terminus reset] Counters zero at the depot and door sensors re-sync, correcting the drift that accumulates over a day.
• [Fleet dashboard] Every bus gets an occupancy bar (34/40, 12/40, 40/40 + 6 standees) with next stop and ETA; offline buses are flagged with last-seen data.
• [Occupancy-along-route chart] Per-stop passenger counts for a bus across its whole route, with the 40-seat capacity line drawn.
• [Event log] Full-bus events, boarding/alighting deltas per stop, resets and offline flags — the operator's audit trail.

• Complete bus-side ESP32 prototype (door IR sensors, GPS, wiring diagram)
• Stop-side P10 LED matrix display unit
• Counting and display firmware (geofencing, terminus reset, telemetry)
• Fleet dashboard (occupancy bars, route charts, event log)
• Installation guide (door sensor mounting, geofence setup, display wiring)
• Project report PDF (background, counting theory, methodology)
• PPT presentation for final review
• Viva Q&A preparation document (IR sensing, GPS, LED matrix, MQTT)

• IR door counts drift over a day (missed or double counts in crowds); the terminus reset bounds this but between resets the count is an estimate — stated as a design behavior, not a measured accuracy.
• GPS geofences need tuning per route; urban canyons degrade position fixes and stop-snapping can lag.
• The dashboard figures (occupancy curves, ETAs, event log entries) are illustrative simulation data from the demo app, not measurements from a running fleet.
• The demo stop display shows one route; a real stop serving many routes needs a larger matrix and a route-selection scheme.
• An offline bus (power cycled, no GPS) is flagged from last-seen data — the system cannot track a unit that has no power.