SpaceSaver

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Inspiration

The inspiration for SpaceSaver stemmed from a deep rooted empathy for the daily parking struggles faced by students, faculty, and visitors at NJIT. Having personally experienced the frustration, often leading to missed classes and appointments, our group felt compelled to find a solution that could alleviate this common source of stress.

What it does

SpaceSaver provides the information on available parking spaces in the Parking Deck. We created a simple UI (with a smaller dataset) to showcase the available parking spots. With Red meaning occupied, Green meaning available , and Blue representing a disabled spot.

How we built it

This project was built using three main parts: Nextjs, Firebase, and Vercel. Nextjs was used to create the frontend, and I was able to display the parking spots visually. These spots could be randomly assigned to an incoming user. Firebase was mainly used to handle all the realtime data used to visualize all the parking spots, either available or occupied. Vercel was used for deployment purposes. Typescript was the primary language in use to ensure code scalability and efficient collaboration of open-source developers.

Challenges we ran into

This project is the first time we have built any kind of GUI visualization for a sensor based system. Additionally, there are some bugs that this program still encounters, such as reserving the spot assigns only on a particular level. The next steps are to address these issues and try to package it into a full-fledged web and mobile app for NJIT students and staff to use.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

QR code scanning
Real-time data updates for the parking spots
Coverage of all levels similar to NJIT Parking Deck
Algorithm shows the customer their reserved/available parking spot directly
Saves a lot of time to find a parking spot

What's next?

A mobile application would definitely help reach more users and make it convenient to reserve a parking spot.
Refined features and algorithms such as assign people with spots according to their preferences - parallel parking, elderly people and electric.
Automated detection of staff/faculty members and students through sensors to help update data more accurately.