NETGEAR Arlo has acquired New York City-based urban intelligence platform Placemeter, the latter announced in a blog post on its site.

Placemeter won the Innovation Alley Connectivity Award, while StratIS and OperaSoft were both awarded the Environmental Impact Award.

Placemeter -- a video tracking system that analyzes existing video feeds and applies computer vision algorithms to them to count cars, pedestrians and bicycles -- is doing its best to track traffic and still appease those who might be a little camera shy by only recording shapes, not faces.

Placemeter helps businesses and municipalities measure what’s happening in front of their stores, on their streets and in their parks.

Previously, the company tracked pedestrian movement around the city after it had already taken place. But now the Placemeter team has created a map that makes it possible to do so in real-time for a busy intersection at Union Square.

Like most of us, I use ProductHunt to keep an eye on the most valued of these products. Placemeter caught my attention a few weeks back, with it's claim that it "turns video into meaningful data". With this combination of computer vision and data analytics, I had to find out more.

Placemeter, the “urban intelligence platform” that launched earlier this year, wants to help businesses measure how many people walk past — and into — their stores. The company is officially launching its first sensor today. Until now, the company was using standard IP cameras.

New York-based Placemeter, which is coming out of beta today, uses computer vision to track both pedestrian and vehicle traffic (including motorcycles and bicycles).