Inspiration
At University of Alabama in Huntsville we were introduced with zonal parking due to increase in the enrollment. Number of vehicles increased accordingly. This resulted in excessive time consumption to search for an empty parking space.
What it does
It notifies the user where the empty parking spot is present via a web application, and the user can go park his vehicle in the spot.
How I built it
We used HTML, CSS, Javascript for the front-end and Firebase and mysql on the back-end. The car parking is simulated using two android phones's proximity sensors to detect if a car is present or absent in a spot.
Challenges I ran into
We faced numerous challenges in terms of hardware and back-end framework. We expected to use the proximity sensors with the help of Raspberry Pi but they were not available here. So we came up with the idea of getting the sensor values from the proximity sensor present in the android phone.
Secondly, the firebase did not show the real-time values as expected. So after a considerable brain-storming we fixed it as-well
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
Though the whole application is still in alpha phase, it is still ready for a demo and real-user experience. The fact that we built the web-application even though none of us had a really good understanding of web-technologies (we learnt those on the go) makes me immensely proud and gives me the confidence to complete this application.
What I learned
This has been a very good learning experience for me as I learned how much we can create as a team. We had debates, conversations about tiny things like the font style, background images and technologies to use. Some of the discussions like regarding the font are petty, but from the user standpoint it means a lot.
What's next for InstaParking
Next phase of this project is to
- Migrate the web-application on to the mobile platform (both iOS and android) where the application will be much more robust and will provide the user with a seamless experience.
- Use neural networks to detect the car parked in a empty space. This would reduce the installation and maintenance costs incurred by the sensors. (Partially implemented)
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