EZ SPOT

Inspiration

You’ve just spent up to an hour commuting to work, you're already a bit ticked off, you arrive to the office, and begin circling the parking lots desperately seeking a spot. After 15 minutes of mindless wandering you discover this lot was full. In fact, according to USA Today the average Seattlite spends 56 hours a year JUST LOOKING FOR PARKING.

What it does

EZ Spot offers a solution. With EZ Spot the user has the ability to check the status of all garages (in realtime, no more wondering security guards) and reserve a spot (this comes in especially in handy if you want to leave to get lunch for an hour) all done through our texting system, that means no more apps to clutter your phone.

How does it work

The beauty about what we are offering is the user doesn’t need a smartphone to use our system, that means Bob who still uses his T-Mobile razor phone will still be happy.

But now to get into the nitty gritty.

Step 1. Install hub at entrances and exits to parking garages within the facility

Step 2. We associate badges and possible phone numbers, for the individuals who want to use our service, to a designated phone number for an organization

Step 3. Users can now reserve spots and get real-time status updates by texting the number provided.

How we built it

We built two garages that we modeled with Raspberry pis that we connected to a matrix keypad which models the user input of checking into the garage with a users ID. We connected the Raspberry pis with red and green lights to model if a person is able to enter the garage. Additionally, there is a screen connected to one of the garages with real-time status of the spaces remaining in that garage. There is also a button which functions as a sensor for when a vehicle exits the garage.

Each garage remotely connects to a server that keeps track of the statuses of all of the garages. This server is connected to Twillo to manage reservations made by users who text to reserve spots in the garages. This can also provide information to users regarding information for all garages in a facility. There is also business logic on this end to make sure that all those who reserve spots are allowed into the appropriate garages and not to increment counts when they arrive. This also allows for individuals who did not reserve spots to enter the garage if there are open spots that are not reserved.

Challenges we ran into

One of the challenges was setting up the Raspberry pi to work with a visual display in order to show the current capacity of the garage. Making sure that reservations were handled properly and edge cases for the counting system were also challenges. Thinking about future implementations also provided challenges since there exist scenarios that we could not currently account for. We were also faced with social problems like a person double-parking.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Connecting the Raspberry pi to the accessories and utilizing web services to connect our backend logic. We are proud to have a small-scale working solution for this cumbersome problem.

What we learned

We learned how to use web services and specifically restful services with http protocols from an IoT device and Twillio services. We also learned circuitry with dealing with the Raspberry Pi and its accessories. We also learned to how to implement what we learned in class to real-life solutions.

What's next for EZ Spot

The next step would be to add cameras to entrances and exits. This would allow for license plate tracking and to keep track of double entries: situations where one car opens the garage and another car goes in right behind.

A following step would be to add cameras to the entire garage. This would provide analytics for each parking spot and would ensure proper counts and that individuals are not double parked.

Built With

• flask
• ngrok
• python
• raspberry-pi
• raspberry-pi-accessories
• twilio