What does a desk occupancy sensor cost per desk in the UK?

Short answer: A UK desk-level deployment is two hardware line items: one Milesight VS340 per desk, plus one Milesight UG63 LoRaWAN gateway shared across the floor. The VS340 is the cheapest of the three units here, so it is effectively the per-desk figure, and the gateway is a single shared cost spread over up to around 2,000 devices. If you would rather cover a bank of desks from the ceiling than fit a sensor to each one, one VS321 replaces several VS340s and adds people counting, temperature, humidity and light. All three run on EU868, the UK LoRaWAN band, so nothing is cabled to the desk.

Do I buy one sensor per desk, or one sensor per bank of desks?

Choose the VS340 if the question you have to answer is about a named desk: is desk 14 free, was this bench used last week. It is a PIR sensor with a 107 degree by 107 degree detection area and a detection distance within 1 m, quoted at up to 95% recognition, and it ships with interchangeable covers that reshape the field for a single desk, a face-to-face pair, a bar table or a round table. One unit, one seat: sensors equal desks.

Choose the VS321 if you have ceiling at 2.4 m to 4 m and you care about the area rather than the individual seat. At a 4 m mount its effective detection range is 6.0 m by 11.0 m (optimal 4.6 m by 8.7 m), and it switches between people counting and desk occupancy modes at up to 95% accuracy. At the prices on the cards above it costs roughly three VS340s, so it starts undercutting them per desk once one unit is genuinely watching more than three. It needs 50 lux of light to work.

Budget one UG63 either way. LoRaWAN needs a gateway. The UG63 is an SX1302 unit with 8 half-duplex channels supporting around 2,000 Class A/B/C devices, backhauled over a 10/100 Ethernet WAN port, with an optional 4G LTE CAT 1 version.

What the hardware figure leaves out

The UG63’s embedded network server is capped at 20 devices. That is enough to commission a pilot, not to run a floor. A 50-desk VS340 rollout goes past it, so the gateway runs as a packet forwarder into The Things Stack, ChirpStack, AWS IoT Core or Milesight’s own platform, and whatever that server or your booking software charges sits outside the hardware price. The UG63 is a gateway, not a dashboard.

Two useful negatives. The VS321 is not a camera: it collects no images. The VS340 is not a people counter, and it is not the VS341 Pro, which adds a thermopile for up to 98% recognition. Batteries are the only recurring hardware cost and are replaceable: the VS340 takes one 4000 mAh ER18505 rated around 5 years at 100 triggers a day, the VS321 four 2700 mAh ER14505 cells rated around 11.3 years at SF7 on EU868.

Will one gateway cover the whole office?

On device count, yes: around 2,000 sensors is far beyond any single floor plate. On radio, the specs do not answer it. The datasheets give transmit power and sensitivity (16 dBm at 868 MHz, down to -140 dBm at 292 bps at the gateway) but no indoor range figure, so nothing published tells you whether one UG63 reaches a basement or a far corner. That is a site survey question. All three are IP30 and indoor-rated, and the VS340 tolerates -20 to +60 degrees C against the VS321’s 0 to 30, so unheated space narrows the choice to the VS340.

Milesight VS340 / VS341 Desk & Seat Occupancy Sensor – VS340-868M (PIR)

VS340-868M

£43.39 ex VAT (£52.07 inc. VAT)

View the VS340-868M

Milesight UG63 Mini LoRaWAN® Gateway – External antenna-UG63-868M

UG63-868M

£98.76 ex VAT (£118.51 inc. VAT)

View the UG63-868M

Milesight VS321 AI Workplace Occupancy Sensor

VS321-868M

£124.20 ex VAT (£149.04 inc. VAT)

Installation height / effective detection range2.4 m ~ 4 m; 6.0 m × 11.0 m effective range at 4 m

View the VS321-868M