Newcastle Parking

Quickly see (and hear) where parking is available in Newcastle upon Tyne

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Inspiration

This has been inspired by the need to know where is available to park in Newcastle upon Tyne and the virgining availability of Alexa in cars.

What it does

Simply you can ask where parking is available to see an overview of where is available, where is fill, and where is almost full. You can also state a location to get more detailed information.

How I built it

The back end is built in PHP and is running on an Amazon Lightsail instance. The data comes directly from the local authority who manage the car parks using a public API.

Challenges I ran into

The biggest challenge I have had is getting it to work without hardware to test it on. the simulator is good but sometimes you just need to experience it to understand the limitations.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I am quite happy with getting the large amount in information down to a manageable level. There are facts the user needs to know but they will be asking while doing other things (ie driving) and will not have the thought time to deconstruct a complicated or over ritch sentence for the information they require.

What I learned

This has been my first successful outing with APL. I may use this knowledge to retrofit some of my past skills with a graphical knowledge.

What's next for Newcastle Parking

As the skill is used I will better identify how to interact with the user and how we can make the interaction process less frictional. As the target audience is in the car I really need to experience the upcoming Alexa auto option and see how they affect the interaction with the user.

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