GRD Journals | Global Research and Development Journal for Engineering | International Conference on Innovations in Engineering and Technology

(ICIET) - 2016 | July 2016

e-ISSN: 2455-5703

An IoT Based Parking System

1Mr.

M. Prem Anand 2Divya Gopinath 3M. Anto Ajisha Shriny 4M. Illakiya
1
Assistant Professor 2,3,4Student
1,2,3,4
Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering
1,2,3,4
Easwari Engineering College, Tamil Nadu, India
Abstract

The idea of the project is to propose an Internet of Things (IoT) based solution to enable the public to find a parking space
without delay and congestion on roads. Every parking space is fitted with an IR distance interrupter sensor to determine if the lot
is empty or vacant. Based on the time taken by the IR waves to get reflected back, occupancy status is determined. A database is
created in cloud with the information about all the parking lots in the building under study. Based on the output of the car
detection unit, the database is periodically updated and hence real time monitoring of the parking lots is done. A user wishing to
park his car can reserve a parking space for him using a mobile app. The app acquires the data from the cloud. The graphical
view of the parking lot in the building is shown on the application pointing to the vacant parking lot. This reservation is
applicable only when the user is within a kilometer radius around the destination. It prevents unnecessary reservation. This
proposal is economical, time efficient and it reduces the fuel consumption of the vehicles. Pollution is also reduced. The study of
some existing systems shows that the level of automation in them is limited to number plate processing further enhancement that
can be added in this system is to fit a timer in the parking lot, which will enable the computation of parking cost. Thus the entire
system is completely automated, reducing man power. Cloud computing and mobile app development using Android SDK is the
technologies used.
Keyword- IoT, Cloud computing, IR distance interrupter sensor, Android SDK
__________________________________________________________________________________________________

I. INTRODUCTION
The major problem that commuters face on road these days is traffic. Blaring noise due to incessant traffic, congested roads and
frustrated public isnt a rarity. One of the major causes for this scenario is the inability of the public living in a metropolitan city
to find a proper parking lot on time. Variety of occasions turn up when we visit various public places like Shopping malls, 5-star
and 7-star hotels, multiplex cinema halls, etc. The difficulty we encounter at these places is finding the availability of parking
space. Most of the times we need to traverse through multiple parking slots to find a free space for parking. The problem
becomes more tedious if the parking is multi-storeyed. Thus the problem is time-consuming. Multiple solutions have been
proposed to overcome this problem. One such being an automated car parking system commanded by an Android application to
regulate the number of cars to be parked by automating the parking and unparking of cars with the help of commands. It requires
the driver to de-board the car. [1]Making use of the parking control unit, the user can search for a free parking lot. The
corresponding information is provided through a SMS. The usage of separate hardware for every building and GSM makes this
approach not efficient. Other intelligent systems include the usage of image processing. [4]Image enhancements and restorations
make this process complex and expensive. Other smart systems provide information about the lots only on reaching the
destination, whereas our proposed system enables the user to check the availability of the lot before reaching the destination and
if lot not available make alternate arrangements before reaching the destination. This overcomes the major drawback of having
reached the destination, realizing there is no parking space and then finding a parking space elsewhere.

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II. SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE

Fig. 1: High level view of the system

The above figure shows the three main components that are required for the project. The three modules are car detection
module, the user interface (application) and the cloud (database). These modules are explained in detail below.
A. Car Detection Module
It comprises of the IR sensors and the controller. This module is responsible for real time monitoring of the parking spaces. The
checking period can be adjusted according to the requirement.
1) IR sensors
The basic concept of IR (infrared) obstacle detection is to transmit the IR signal (radiation) in a direction and a signal is received
at the IR receiver when the IR radiation bounces back from a surface of the object.

Fig. 2: Operation principle of IR sensor

Here in the figure the object can be anything which has certain shape and size, the IR LED transmits the IR signal on to
the object and the signal is reflected back from the surface of the object. The reflected signals is received by an IR receiver. The
IR receiver can be a photodiode / phototransistor or a readymade module which decodes the signal. For this proposal, IR distance
interrupter is used.
The IR sensor used is Grove IR distance interrupter.

Fig. 3: Grove IR distance interrupter

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This IR Distance Interrupter features a high-sensitivity RFR-359F photo reflector to perform distance detection
function. The photo reflector consists of a GaAs infrared light emitting diode and a silicon planar phototransistor. When the
infrared light emitted by the emitter gets reflected on a surface that blocked it, the phototransistor can pick up the signal for
distance calculation. This module is panel mounted so that you can easily implement it on the surface of robots or other projects
without wiring clutter. Also a potentiometer for adjustment and an indicator LED are arranged on the back for easy and clear use.
2) Intel Edison Board (Controller)

Fig. 4: Intel Edison Board

The Intel Edison compute module plus an expansion board interfaces with a wide range of Arduino Uno R3 shields, allowing
for quick and easy prototyping with open source hardware and a software development environment. It has 20 digital
input/output pins including 4 pins as PWM outputs,6 analog inputs,1 UART (RX/TX),1 I2C,1 ICSP 6-pin header (SPI),Micro
USB device connector OR (via mechanical switch) dedicated standard size USB host Type-A connector,Micro USB device
(connected to UART),SD Card connector, DC power jack (7V 15V DC input).
The IR distance interruptor is connected to breakout board and using program written in arduino, the presence and
absence of car is detected.

Fig. 5: Output obtained on the serial monitor of Arduino IDE

B. Cloud
Cloud physically refers to the enormous data storage virtual entity which is based on on-demand service. The graphical view of
the parking space of the building under study is fed into the data base of the cloud. The cloud that is considered within the scope
of this paper is IBM Bluemix. [5]Bluemix is an open standard, cloud-based platform to build, manage and run apps of all types,
including Web, Mobile, Big data, Smart devices and many more. Bluemix offers a single solution environment with the
resources and infrastructure one needs to develop and deploy apps. The cloud applications built on Bluemix will reduce time for
application/infrastructure provisioning, allow for flexible capacity, help to address any lack of internal tech resources and reduce
the total cost of ownership.

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Fig. 6: Cloud storage

Fig. 7: graphical view of the parking lots

Based on the output from the controller the corresponding parking lots are marked for vacancy and availability. Periodic
updating of the parking lots on the cloud paves a way for real time monitoring of the parking lots. The cloud thus contains the
graphical view of the buildings in which this pre-booking facility is available. When a parking lot is decided as empty by the car
detection module, the lot is marked empty in the cloud and the same information is relayed to the user via the user interface, the
app. If a parking lot is pre-booked by a user, the lot is marked as booked and the same is displayed on the app. If a pre-booked lot
remains unoccupied after the stipulated amount of time, the reservation of the lot is cancelled and the lot is marked empty during
the next phase. The same steps are followed when a lot is occupied. Thus cloud serves as the intermediate medium between the
controller and the user interface. [3].
C. Application Module
The mobile app to be designed for this project is done using Android SDK. It is a a software development kit that enables
developers to create applications for the Android platform. The Android SDK includes sample projects with source code,
development tools, an emulator, and required libraries to build Android applications. Applications are written using the Java
programming language and run on Dalvik, a custom virtual machine designed for embedded use which runs on top of a Linux
kernel.The apps functionality is to check the authentication of user- by verifying the username and password. Then it has to
process the location request of the user.

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Fig. 8: mobile application

The data from cloud has to be synced for the particular location and the app shows all the available vacant parking lots.
The user has to choose one lot and click reserve button. A confirmation that the parking lot has been reserved in the users name
has to be shown on the app. The graphical view of the parking lot showing the booked lot should be available to the user. [2].

Fig. 9: flow diagram

Fig. 10: Schematic view of the lots

The user who wants to pre-book parking lot, will send a request using the app which is explained above. The request is
sent to cloud database where the information about the parking lot is updated. If any parking lot is decided as vacant, the
corresponding parking lot number is relayed back to the user by means of the mobile application. The updating of the parking lot
in cloud is done every 10 minutes and is done by using the controller-Intel Edison board. The each parking lot is attached to an
IR sensor. The IR sensor periodically senses by transmitting the infrared waves and vehicle is present (occupied), the IR sensor
will senses the received signal and will give the output as 1(occupied).This will be updated in cloud using controller. The
controller gets the output from the IR sensor simply by dumping the code and uploading it. If the IR sensor's output is 1 then it is
occupied. If it returns zero then the parking lot is unoccupied. Similarly this process is done for all parking lots and is updated in
the cloud. The user can now pre book the parking lot using the same mobile application. So the lot will be now pre-booked for

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that particular user. If the user didn't reach to the allocated location within 15 minutes, then the parking lot will now be specified
as unoccupied. This will reduce the traffic congestion and will save time and manpower. The details can also be made visible to
the public at the entry of the parking space. This may help the users to check if their pre-booked lot is still vacant.

III. CONCLUSION
Thus a user friendly app enables the user to book parking lots without any difficulty. Only the data charges are incurred from the
user end. The entire system is cost effective and easy to design. This overcomes the drawbacks in other implemented parking
systems. A further improvement that can be done is to activate a timer for the period of occupancy. This will enable the
automatic calculation of parking fee. Another improvement is to permit the user to pre-book a lot for a particular period of time
and pay using prepaid facility avoiding latter confusion.

REFERENCES
[1] Automated Car Parking System Commanded by Android Application - Prof. D. J. Bonde , Rohit S. Shende, Ketan S.
Gaikwad, Akshay S. Kedari,Amol U. Bhokre
[2] Android Mobile Application Build on Eclipse-Garima Pandey, Diksha Dani
[3] Research on Mobile Cloud Computing: Review,Trend and Perspectives-Han Qi,Abdullah Gani ,University of Malaya
[4] Design and Implementation of an Intelligent Parking Management System using Image Processing - B.Karunamoorthy,
R.SureshKumar, N.JayaSudha
[5] http://kata.coderdojo.com/wiki/Free_Access_to_IBM_Bluemix,_a_Platform-as-a-Service_%28PaaS%29

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