10-Kotch

Ability to search and filter by destination, event or lot
Remember where you parked
Parked Wrapped a review of where you've "Kotched"!
Real time parking updates for a parking lot
Home screen showing nearby parking spots
Ability to report an issue

Inspiration

Finding a parking spot in busy urban areas is often frustrating, time-consuming, and unpredictable. Drivers waste valuable time circling for available spaces, leading to increased traffic congestion, fuel consumption, and environmental impact. Additionally, security concerns and lack of visibility into parking conditions deter drivers from certain areas.

What it does

Kotch is a smart parking assistant that uses computer vision, AI predictions, and real-time parking capacity updates to help drivers quickly find or reserve a parking spot.

Features

Available Spot Detection using Computer Vision
Real-Time Updates on Remaining Capacity
See parking lot info (isFree?, hasSecurity? EV-friendly?, safe?) beforehand
Remember where you parked
Predicts Parking Availability using historical trends and external factors.
Community-Driven Insights – Users report lot conditions, security concerns, theft/break-in incidents, and nearby alternatives.
Find Nearby Parking if your intended destination is full.
Gamification elements – points, yearly timeline (Parking Wrapped)
Book spots ahead of time for private events and access exclusive promotions.

How we built it

Planning Phase: Once we formed a group, we created a Jira account and utilized an epic to plan preparatory tasks, for instance brainstorming ideas and researching and learning the tech stack.
Execution Phase: Based on our plans we solidified Kotch as our project, and from our SRS determined the User Stories that would guarantee the best possible user experience.
We decided on team roles based on our strengths (Nasha - Cloud & infrastructure, Shawn - frontend and design, Daryn - backend)

Challenges we ran into

Unexpected issues arose surrounding Azure authorization associated with using a school account.
These issues necessitated late stage architecture changes and greatly increased development time
Unexpected build errors slowed down our deployment

Accomplishments that we're proud of

All of us stayed up all night to ensure that critical issues were fixed, and supported each other through issues both within our code, and without.
Learning and implementing new technologies in such a short time

What we learned

We are extremely proud of the new technologies we learnt such as springboot, kubernetes and terraform.
We have deeper understanding of using cloud based tools
We note the significance of limiting scope-creep and shipping fast instead of aiming for perfection

What's next for 10-Kotch

Completing all the aforementioned features
Improve latency on queries and realtime updates
Incorporate robust unit testing,
Approach businesses and parking lot owners (Licensing, Funding, Marketing and Launch)