UWGB parking lot app

Inspiration

Finding a parking spot at the UW-Green Bay campus during peak hours or harsh winter weather can be stressful and time-consuming. We wanted to build a real-time, highly accessible tool specifically designed for UWGB students and faculty to check parking availability, track snow removal status, and save their parking spots instantly.

What it does

UWGB Campus Parking is a Progressive Web App (PWA) that provides real-time occupancy updates across 7 campus parking lots. Key features include:

Live Occupancy & Capacity Tracking: Visual progress bars showing available vs. occupied spots.
Campus Conditions & Alerts: Real-time notifications for snow plowing, maintenance, and weather advisories (e.g., Kress Events Center Lot, Wood Hall Lot, Shorewood Lot).
Spot Saver: Memory tool for students to save their exact parked location.
Live Simulation Mode: Simulates real-time campus traffic and spot filling/draining dynamics.
Offline & Installable (PWA): Works seamlessly on iOS and Android as a native-like app with fast offline caching.

How we built it

Frontend & UI: React, Tailwind CSS, Lucide Icons, Vite.
PWA Architecture: Custom Service Worker (sw.js) for cache-first asset management and manifest.json for home screen installation.
AI-Assisted Development: Built and deployed rapidly using Bolt.new.

Challenges we faced

Optimizing the Service Worker caching strategies to ensure smooth offline fallback without serving stale parking status data, as well as designing a unified UI that fits UW-Green Bay's brand identity.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Going from concept to a fully deployed, installable PWA with custom branding and simulated real-time data in just a few hours.

What's next for UWGB Campus Parking

Integration with campus IoT barrier/camera sensors for 100% automated real-time counts.
Push notifications for snow emergencies or lot closures.
Interactive campus map integration.