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After coming across a 2004 installation by Carsten Nicolai titled "anti" where he used a theremin as an element for presence sensing, I was wondering if this principle could be extended to greater distances.

Let me better explain: would it be possible to use the principle of the theremin antenna for sensing the presence of people inside a room (not simply hands on short distance)?

I imagine an application in interactive multimedia context on which I would be very interested to learn more.

Transistor
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moscardo
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    Yes, it's possible. Two thin people = 1.5 fat folk. – Andy aka Dec 07 '21 at 16:01
  • Sure that's possible, you might need to change the shape of the antenna and the frequency it operates at. Also know that movement/presence detectors using an antenna already exist, I'm thinking about a small microwave "radar" sensor like this: https://www.smart-prototyping.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=44278 My point: you don't specifically need a theramin device for this. Also know that a theramin is (from an electronic viewpoint) just a proximity sensor controlling an oscillator. – Bimpelrekkie Dec 07 '21 at 16:18
  • You can use antenna to detect and track people in rooms. Wifi people sensing for example uses WiFi the detect people moving around rooms. See: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1901.00715 – user1850479 Dec 07 '21 at 16:19
  • Is your end-goal to just sense movement in a room, or to use a sensor's output to modulate some multimedia device? A burglar alarm can sense movement, but it may not yield a satisfying analog output for multimedia - its output is on or off. So tell more of your end-intentions. – glen_geek Dec 07 '21 at 17:02
  • There are dozens of research papers describing just this, and some of them apply to wifi routers and antennas. – Voltage Spike Dec 07 '21 at 17:12
  • @glen_geek I've also thought about an alarm sensor like the one you are mentioning (a PIR, let's say) but it would give me only a digital output, as you say. I would prefer an analog output signal, proportional to the distance between a person (people) and the sensor, possibly omnidirectional in order to get this value regardless of the directions in which the person approaches the sensor. I've previously worked with distance sensors (IR, laser, UltraSonic) but for a series of reasons a don't want to use them in this new project. – moscardo Dec 09 '21 at 10:12
  • @Bimpelrekkie: exactly, I simply need a proximity sensor without a sound trasducer. Thank you for your very interesting link. Unfortunately, I read from the documentation - [link](https://github.com/jdesbonnet/RCWL-0516/) - , it seems to be an ON/OFF sensor (it can be used as a PIR substitute) :( – moscardo Dec 09 '21 at 10:13
  • Thank you @user1850479 , I will read some of the papers you are mentioning (this topic of using WiFi to detect movements and gestures in general always seemed to me to be "black magic" kind of stuff and also particularly difficult to implement). – moscardo Dec 09 '21 at 10:13

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