Dr. Ning Zhu, Dr. Ameera Al-Karkhi, Mohamad EL-Husseini, Jeffrey Lau

Sheridan College/ Faculty of Applied Science and Technology

 

The smart parking project addresses one of the rising issues of  increase in  human population, which is parking availability. As communities grow and the globe population increases, parking lots increase, and as a result our environment is impacted. By increasing parking lots in our communities, we are taking from the environment space (trees, grass, plants). Also, we are adding cars that are not necessarily electric thus generating more footprint. As a result, a solution to manage our parking lots smartly becomes a key aspect to our environment. In this project, we try to address the issue of managing our parking spaces efficiently by developing a smart parking solution consisting of sensors that detect parking spaces occupied and allow the user to monitor the spaces’ availability through a mobile app. We are motivated about this project because first it impacts our environment by efficiently managing parking spaces and lots. Second it consists of state-of-the-art technologies that we can utilize in our solution like the Internet of Things connectivity that exists today. Third, the problem is a common issue in all of the world and that the application of a solution could be replicated in other scenarios. Our main product that we are developing is a smart parking sensor.

The proposed Smart Parking System

The diagram below shows the components of our solution, the first stage is collecting the data from the users parking in the lots or buildings where the parking sensors are installed. The parking sensor will be installed in each parking space. The parking sensor will communicate the data through an LTE-M network. The data will be sent to an IoT Platfrom, there are several platforms for instance, Arduino IoT , Freeboard IoT or Dweet IoT. We haven’t made a decision on which one we will be using yet. We are still comparing features to understand which one is a best fit. When parking users are going into the parking lot, they will be able to access the free parking space by using the Lot Parking Display or through a custom Mobile Application. In the proposed prototype we are going to simulate an Android Application showing the sensor distance information. The mobile app successfully gets the data from the database and displays available addresses to the user. After selecting an address, the app successfully displays the parking spots, the store, and the roads to the user. It also automatically updates the display when a value in the database is changed.

In conclusion, on the hardware side, the sensor works to specification, the Arduino can connect to the internet to send and get data while running of the LIPO battery. On the user side, the mobile app can get the input from the user and display the correct address with the amount of open or closed parking spots to the user. Further enhancements to this project is to check the connectivity of the Arduino to the database. Furthermore, research into the incompatible sensor and the display for the on-location parking spot.