Occupancy in your BMS. Nothing leaves the building.
Quorum is a passive occupancy sensor that uplinks over LoRaWAN and surfaces as standard BACnet/IP objects in your building management system. No cloud platform, no vendor dashboard, and no public-internet path for the measurement data: the sensing radio has no IP stack, and the whole pipeline terminates on an appliance inside your building.
Or read the BACnet integration walkthrough (PDF), the artefact your controls team reads first.
Quorum exists for buildings where the occupancy data belongs on the BMS, not on a vendor's servers. It uses the same passive Wi-Fi probe sensing as Crowd-Sense, with the opposite deployment posture: the sensor bins observations into bracketed unique-device counts on-device, uplinks a few integers per window over LoRaWAN, and a small appliance inside your building serves them to your BMS as standard BACnet objects. There is no SaaS subscription and no reporting portal. Your BMS is the only consumer.
It suits estates that already run thermal or optical people-counters and are tired of their failure modes, that face IT or data-residency review on anything cloud-connected, or that already operate a LoRaWAN network and want occupancy to be one more device profile on it.
Native BACnet, not a cloud connector
The appliance presents one BACnet/IP device per site (not one per sensor, so an 80-sensor estate doesn't flood your asset tree), registered under ASHRAE vendor ID 1624, Visual Solutions UK Ltd. Discovery is a standard Who-Is; integration uses the BACnet driver your BMS already has. No custom driver, no API gateway, no polling a REST endpoint through a firewall exception.
| Object (per sensor) | Type | What it carries |
|---|---|---|
Count_5m / _15m / _30m / _60m | AI | Unique-device count per closed window |
Occupancy_State | MSV | Unoccupied / Low / Medium / High, thresholds configurable per sensor |
Health | MSV | OK / Degraded / SnifferDown / TimeSyncLost / Offline |
Last_Update_Age | AI | Minutes since last uplink: the dead-sensor alarm input |
Bracket_0..4_5m, estimates, firmware & uptime vitals | AI / CS | Signal-strength brackets, 60-min estimate, boot count, firmware version |
COV subscriptions are on by default, so a demand-controlled-ventilation loop sees an
occupancy change within seconds of the uplink rather than on the next poll. Sensors are named by
zone (S07_Atrium_Count_5m) from the appliance admin UI, and every site receives a
generated integration handover: object table with your labels, COV recommendations, and suggested
alarm rules for the two objects that matter (Last_Update_Age and Health).
Different physics than thermal and optical
Thermal and optical counters share a physics regime: a field of view, a lens or thermopile, a calibration that drifts. Passive Wi-Fi probe sensing fails in different, uncorrelated ways, which is exactly what you want from a second opinion or a replacement.
A zone, not a doorway.
No field of view to aim. One ceiling- or wall-mounted sensor observes the devices present across a zone; you don't mount one per entrance and sum the errors.
Indifferent to light and heat.
Sunlight through an atrium roof, warm surfaces, glare and shadow: the classic thermal-counter failure modes have no mechanism to affect radio observation.
No calibration drift.
There is no lens to clean and no baseline that walks. The sensor reports its own health, uptime and last-update age to the BMS, so a dead sensor is an alarm, not a discovery.
Private by architecture, reviewed once
Device identifiers never leave the sensor. Observations are binned into bracket counts on the sensor itself; the LoRaWAN uplink carries a few integers, and the radio that carries them has no IP stack. This is a stricter posture than our own cloud product, and it is architectural, not contractual: there is no configuration in which the measurement data can reach the public internet.
Firmware updates arrive through a brief scheduled management window to an isolated SSID on the appliance, ed25519-signed and verified on-device before boot; a LoRa-only fallback exists where IT policy prohibits even that. Your security team reviews one box on your LAN, once. We supply the data-flow statement and GDPR position paper as standard.
What we won't promise
The same honesty policy as the rest of the Crowd-Sense family. Four limits, stated up front:
- Counts are unique devices, not people. Phones rotate the addresses they broadcast, so raw counts over-read (roughly 2–4× at busy peaks). The counts are exact, stable in their bias, and ideal for trends, thresholds and control loops. If you want a headcount estimate, you set a per-sensor calibration multiplier against your own ground truth (badge data, a manual count), and both values stay exposed as separate BACnet objects.
- Zone density, not per-room precision. Quorum will not tell you whether a 6-person meeting room holds 3 or 4. If per-room headcount is the requirement, an optical sensor is the right tool.
- Not for life-safety. Quorum is for energy, comfort and space-utilisation decisions. It must not be used for emergency egress, mustering, or any life-safety function.
- Indoor, mains-powered, and LoRaWAN-attached. Sensors need USB-C or hardwired 5 V power, and the site needs a LoRaWAN gateway: yours if you run one, or one we supply.
Two ways to deploy the appliance
Appliance we ship (default). A pre-imaged, locked-down box (Raspberry Pi or fanless mini-PC) carrying the whole stack: LoRaWAN network server, payload decoder and BACnet/IP server. Plug into LAN and power; sensors surface in the BMS within minutes.
Software-only on your VM. For IT departments that insist on their own hypervisor: the same stack as a Docker Compose deployment with install documentation. And if you already run a LoRaWAN network server (ChirpStack, via an MSP or in-house), we register against it and ship only the decode and BACnet layer.
One appliance serves up to around 100 sensors, so growing within a building adds sensor lines, not infrastructure.
Pricing
Quorum is sold, not subscribed: hardware plus a per-sensor annual licence, with the first year included. No competitor in this category publishes prices. We think that tells you something, so here are ours.
Setup (one-time)
| Item | Price | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Quorum appliance | £450 | Software, setup and onboarding; serves up to ~100 sensors |
| Quorum sensor | £250 | Includes the first-year licence; volume tiers below |
| Dedicated LoRaWAN gateway (optional) | ~£200 | Only if you'd rather we supply one than use your network |
Per-sensor volume tiers
Tiers are set by total installed count at the site; top-up orders price at the band matching the new total.
| Sensors at site | Per sensor, one-time (incl. year-1 licence) | Annual licence, year 2+ |
|---|---|---|
| 1–9 | £250 | £80 |
| 10–24 | £225 | £80 |
| 25–49 | £200 | £80 |
| 50+ | £175 | £80 |
Running costs, from year 2
| Fee | Amount | Covers |
|---|---|---|
| Per-sensor annual licence | £80 / sensor (£64 on 3-year prepay, £60 on 5-year) | Signed, verified firmware updates; fleet health monitoring; on-prem licence service |
| Per-site support fee | £250 / year up to 50 sensors; £500 / year above | A named technical contact, issue diagnosis, configuration and integration support |
Worked example, a four-sensor site: £1,450 one-time (appliance plus four sensors, year one all-in), then £570 per year from year two. Prices in GBP, exclusive of VAT; EUR pricing on request.
The pilot programme
We run a small number of concurrent 90-day pilots: a pre-configured appliance, a LoRaWAN gateway and four sensors, loaned at no charge and no obligation, with the BACnet object map and integration handover for your controls team. You validate the data against your own building and your own BMS before committing to anything.
What a pilot needs from you: power and network for the appliance, BACnet/IP reachability to the BMS, and a nominated contact on your controls side. The kit is returnable; if you proceed, we integrate with your existing LoRaWAN network or supply a dedicated gateway.
Quorum is the on-prem product in the Crowd-Sense family, from Visual Solutions UK Ltd, operating continuously since 1994. Same sensing technology as the Crowd-Sense cloud platform, opposite deployment posture; the privacy architecture is shared, and in Quorum it is stricter still.