Queue Length: know when the line is too long

What it does

The camera over the tills already sees every queue that ever forms; it just doesn't tell anyone. This check counts the queue continuously and compares it to a rule you write in plain English, like ‘queue longer than four people’. Cross the line and it flags. Drop back under it and it stays quiet. Because it judges a window of recent frames rather than a single still, a momentary bunch-up while a family regroups doesn't read the same as a line that's actually growing. That's the whole product, and on a busy Saturday it's worth rather a lot.

What the alert looks like

An email lands with a plain-English description (‘six people queuing at the front tills’) and a link to the live moment, so whoever gets it can glance before they move. There's also a JSON webhook, which shops typically point at Slack or the POS back office so the shop-floor headsets hear about it. The alert is a nudge to act now, not a report to read later.

Where it changes the shift

• Opening a second till before the walk-outs start, rather than after.
• The lunchtime rush at a cafe counter, where three extra people in the line is the difference between fine and chaos.
• The Saturday queue at customer services, which nobody can see from the tills.
• Settling whether 'we were slammed' matches what the camera actually saw.

Thresholds are set per camera, so the express till, the kiosk and customer services can each have their own definition of too long. And to be clear about which page you're on: Queue Length is an operational alert, built so someone opens a lane in the next sixty seconds. If you want counts and dwell patterns to read weekly for rota and layout decisions, that's Footfall & Dwell Time, a report check that reads the whole video afterwards and writes the patterns down. Same cameras, opposite time horizon.

Where it runs

It's enabled per camera on the ones that see queues. It runs on the existing RTSP feed, on uploaded footage if you want to test it against last week first, or on a phone propped over a counter that has no camera at all. A fully on-prem appliance mode exists for footage that can't leave the building. And since it counts people rather than watching them, there's not much to worry about privacy-wise, but the wider point holds everywhere in Svid: no facial recognition, anywhere, ever.

What it costs

Before you buy, the Store prices Queue Length from your own usage: cameras, hours a day and watch level become a live ‘+$X/mo at your usage’ figure next to the check. It's added to a monthly subscription that is priced from your own usage, with a $9 a month floor, and the derivation is on screen at signup. The pricing section shows the working, and the other checks share the same arithmetic.

Can I set my own definition of 'too long'?

Yes. The threshold is yours, per camera, and it's just a plain-English rule like ‘queue longer than four people’. The express till and the kiosk don't have to agree.

Will it alert constantly during a rush?

It flags when the threshold is crossed, not every second it stays crossed; a re-fire within two minutes is recorded as the same event continuing, not a new alert. If it's still noisy, you tune the threshold rather than learning to ignore it.

Do I need a dedicated queue camera or sensor?

No. It runs on the camera already covering the tills, and where coverage is thin a live phone camera does the job. There's no hardware to buy anywhere in Svid.