Towards development of IoT based smart Parking system using raspberry pi

ith the rapid proliferation of vehicle availability and usage in recent years, finding a vacant car parking space is becoming more and more difficult, resulting in a number of practical conflicts. Parking problems are becoming ubiquitous and ever growing at an alarming rate in every major city. Lot

Project Title

Towards development of IoT based smart Parking system using raspberry pi

Project Area of Specialization

Internet of Things

Project Summary

ith the rapid proliferation of vehicle availability and usage in recent years, finding a vacant car parking space is becoming more and more difficult, resulting in a number of practical conflicts. Parking problems are becoming ubiquitous and ever growing at an alarming rate in every major city. Lot of research and development is being done all over the world to implement better and smarter parking management mechanisms. Widespread use of wireless technologies paired with the recent advances in wireless applications for parking, manifests that digital data dissemination could be the key to solve emerging parking problems. Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) technology has attracted increased attention and is rapidly emerging due to their enormous application potential in diverse fields. This buoyant field is expected to provide an efficient and cost-effective solution to the effluent car parking problems. This thesis proposes a Smart Parking on wireless sensor network technology which provides advanced features like remote parking monitoring by using Android application, the alarm when parking the car at the wrong place and save the energy of light system can open at the night when any human come inside the garage only. The thesis describes the overall system architecture of smart parking from hardware to software implementation in the view point of sensor networks. We implemented a full-fledged prototype system for parking management to realize the design functionalities and features mentioned. Our preliminary test results show that the performance of this WSN and internet of thing IOT based system can effectively satisfy the needs and requirements of existing parking hassles thereby minimizing the time consumed to find vacant parking lot, real-time information rendering.

Project Objectives

The objectives of this research project are as follows: -

1. To design an automatic parking system that provides information of empty parking spaces in the indoor parking area and design Lighting System at night and save the energy for in lighting system by using Motion Sensor (PIR sensor) and Light Dependent Resistors (LDRs) when any one moving inside the garage at night the lighting system will ON.
2. To develop a prototype of smart parking system using Arduino micro controller sensors and Android mobile application.
3. To evaluate the performance of developed prototype to provide information and facilitate the users to the location of empty parking spaces and calculate the distance from the location of car parking to user.

Project Implementation Method

In this Smart Parking System using IOT, we are using five IR Sensors and two 12 volt servo motors. IR sensors and Servo motors are connected to the Raspberry pi board. NodeMCU controls the complete process and sends the parking availability and parking time information to Adafruit IO so that it can be monitored from anywhere in the world using this platform. Two IR sensors are used at entry and exit gate so that it can detect the cars at entry and exit gate and automatically open and close the gate. We previously used Adafruite IO cloud in many IoT projects, follow the link to learn more.

Two servo motors are used as entry and exit gate, so whenever the IR sensor detects a car, the servo motor automatically rotates from 45° to 140°, and after a delay, it will return to its initial position. Another three IR sensors are used to detect if the parking slot is available or occupied and send the data to Raspberry pi. Adafruit IO dashboard also has two buttons to manually operate the entry and exit gate.

Benefits of the Project

1. Environment. One goal of Smart Parking is to reduce the time taken and the hassle factor of locating an available parking space. Being able to accurately direct a driver to an available space has many environmental benefits; it reduces CO2 emissions, noise and other pollutants.
2. Convenience. It can be frustrating, especially at peak times, driving around town looking for available spaces. The inability for someone to locate a parking space may result in lost custom or influence them to shop at alternative locations. The ability for a shopper or visitor to quickly identify a space reduces the friction and improves the overall experience. The convenience factor is of particular importance for spaces reserved for disabled drivers, public service or emergency vehicles.
3. Real-Time Data and Insights. For a local council, car park operator or business – Smart Parking provides you with rich data-sets that can be used to identify trends, peak-times and other metrics that can be used in forecasting and reporting.
4. Reduced Traffic. When a driver knows exactly where they need to go; it reduces idling and unnecessary driving – therefore optimises traffic flows in built-up areas.
5. New Business Models. Smart Parking creates the possibility of new business models that are only made possible using technology. Reward programs, app-based payments and dynamic parking tariffs are just some examples.
6. Reduced costs and overhead. Traditional on-street parking may have required investments in parking meters or parking inspectors. Smart Parking technology can reduce these overheads by automated processes and providing targeted enforcement activity.
7. Enforcement Effectiveness. Target enforcement means your staff can be directed towards people who have overstayed to take the necessary action.
8. Safety. Decreased searching for spaces can reduce accidents by ensuring drivers maintain their attention rather than browsing for spaces or making rash manoeuvres.
9. Integrated Payments. Smart Parking systems can include real-time and electronic payment methods via an app or a browser. This makes the parking experience far easier and provides more structured data to income streams (i.e. Categorising revenue by parking facility, area, road, etc).
10. Smart City. Smart Parking will soon become a necessity for any city or town wishing to embrace Smart City technologies or standards such as ISO 37122. .

Technical Details of Final Deliverable

Processing Unit: It comprises of Raspberry pi which is a processor on chip. The processing unit acts like an intermediate between the sensors and cloud. All the sensors are wirelessly connected to the processing unit. A single raspberry pi unit comprises of 26 GPIO pins i.e. 26 different sensors can be connected to it. However we can increase this number by attaching a multiplexer (MUX) to it. It is essential that the ground of raspberry pi and sensors must be connected in order to transfer data using the GPIO pins. There is a python script running on the chip that checks the status of various GPIO pins and updates this information onto the cloud. Data collected from various sensors is sent to the raspberry pi through the esp8266 chip. The raspberry pi then transmits this data to the  IBM MQTT Server through MQTT protocol over a channel. MQTT (Message Queue Telemetry Transport) Protocol is a publish-subscribe based "light weight" messaging protocol that is used on top of theTCP/IP protocol. It is designed to establish connections across remote locations where limited amount of data needs to be transferred or in cases of low bandwidth availability.

Mobile application: The mobile application acts like an interface for the end users to interact with the system. The application is developed in Apache Cordova and Angular Js framework using Javascript as a programming language. The purpose of using Apache Cordova is to create applications that can run on both android and iOS platform with the same source code.  The application is connected with the IBM MQTT server through a secure channel and a 2-factor authorization. The purpose of this mobile application is to provide information regarding availability of parking spaces and allowing the end user to book a slot accordingly. Transfer of data takes place in JSON format between IBM MQTT server and the mobile application.  In order to ensure proper communication both the Raspberry pi and mobile application must be subscribed to a particular channel on IBM MQTT server.

The Cloud: The IBM MQTT server is hosted on cloud. Cloud acts as a data base to store all the records related to parking areas and end users that have access to the system. It keeps a track of every user connected to the system and maintains information such as time at which the car was parked, time duration for parking a car, amount paid by the user and mode of payment. It is due to the flexible nature of cloud which permits the system to add any number of users at any time of the day. Continuous backup is made of the data stored on cloud in order to ensure easy and quick recovery of data in case of any kind of system failure.

Final prototype will show different aspect of project and indicate about the free slot using the clouds.

Final Deliverable of the Project

HW/SW integrated system

Core Industry

IT

Other Industries

Core Technology

Internet of Things (IoT)

Other Technologies

Sustainable Development Goals

Decent Work and Economic Growth, Sustainable Cities and Communities

Required Resources

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