Inspiration
Imagine how much time could be saved if you were able to instantaneously know exactly where to find a parking spot in any given parking deck at UGA. As a student who lives off-campus, finding parking has always been a persistent and time-consuming issue. No matter how early students may start from home, they inevitably end up wasting time going in circles looking for a vacant parking spot. As a result, we wanted to develop an application that would propose a solution by giving users an exact location of all vacant parking spots in any given UGA parking deck. Our app does exactly that.
What it does
Our project allows a user to see exactly what parking spots are open in each of the UGA parking lots. By designing the UI of our application Bark Park with the user’s preferences in mind, we were able to construct a visual representation of how to operate our application. Bark Park not only allows users to view all parking decks’ current occupancy but also allows users to select a given deck and view where exactly the vacant spots are, on every level in the deck.
How we built it
The UI design was built using Figma. The backend code was written using Java through an online software called Replit.
Challenges we ran into
It was difficult to become familiar with new platforms like Fimga. We also weren’t able to implement the GeoLocation and OpenSpots API to add the street parking finder feature. We struggled to download the correct GSON packages that would be compatible with our hardware.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are proud of the fact that we created both a UI presentation and backend code. Additionally, we are glad to have finished a project with a group comprised entirely of first-time hackers.
What we learned
Through our project, we were able to become more acquainted with platforms like Fimga and new languages including HTML and CSS. We also were able to better our understanding of other languages we were already familiar with like Java.
What's next for Bark Park
We hope to add APIs in the future that will allow for the ability to include street parking. By utilizing APIs, such as GeoLocation and OpenSpots, we would be able to detect and provide directions to all vacant street parking spots that are within a given radius. We also hope to add a reserved parking feature within the parking garages for events or daily parking. All UGA parking decks would also have to have sensors implemented in order to update in real-time what parking spots are open.
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