The Internet of Parkings

Details

Sharing an underground parking slot between a motorbike and a car can be challenging for both:

The rider needs to know if there is a car in the parking or not. If the car is already there, he can enter the parking. If not, he should park the motorbike outside so that the car parks first, and the motorbike after the car ;
The driver needs to know if there is a motorbike in the parking or not. If she wants to use the car and if the motorbike is parked, she needs that the riders moves the bike before she can drive. If she wants to park the car and the motorbike is already in the parking, she needs to call the rider so that he moves the motorbike.

The situation is made more complex by the fact that the parking being underground, it is not possible to see the state of the parking slot without moving there (and driving back to the surface is the slot is occupied), and it is not possible to communicate from the parking (no mobile connectivity and no wifi).

What if there was a possibility to be check the state of the parking remotely ? This is precisely the purpose of this project !

Files

Php.rar

The file for the web application. They need to be downloaded on a server. You can find very cheap PHP hosting solutions for 1 or 2$ / months.

RAR Archive - 37.33 kB - 08/29/2019 at 17:04

Download

sender.rar

The arduino file for the sending device, positioned in the parking. Library needed are Esp32 library (you'll find easily instruction on the internet on how to install it), Lora library by sandeep mistry as well as the oled library.

RAR Archive - 1.57 kB - 08/29/2019 at 17:04

Download

receiver.rar

The arduino file for the receiving device, positioned in a place where wifi is available.

RAR Archive - 1.90 kB - 08/29/2019 at 17:04

Download

Components

2 × Lora TTGO OLED module V1

1 × Ultrasound sensor (HC-SR04) "Trigger pin" connected to pin 12, "Read pin" connected to pin 21, Vcc connected to the +5V pin of the LORA module

Build Instructions

Collapse

1
Project components description
- IOT
A Lora ESP32 TTGO module (the “sender”) is connected to an ultrasound sensor are positioned in the parking slot, and transmits the distance between the wall and any obstacle.

See the sensor in the transparent plastic box, connected to a 5V power supply and "looking" at the bike

An early version used the ESP32 touch detection native capability (using a wire connected to the parking door knob, it is possible to detect when someone touch the knob).

A second LORA module(the “receiver”) gets the data and transmits it to the cloud.
- Cloud
A very simple PHP pages gets the data from the receiver and puts the data into a simple text file.

Another PHP page get the data from the text file, and displays the icon corresponding to the situation (“empty” “car” or “motorbike”).

viewstate.php web page displayeddisplayed if nothing is in the parking

viewstate.php web page displayed if a motorbike is detected (the number is the distance in centimeters between the sensor and the obstacle).

Other functionalities could be easily added (such as sending a email whenever the car or the motorbikes arrives).
- Mobile
A simple URL widget is added to the phone’s front page : clicking on the widget opens a navigator showing the state of the parking slot

The icon after the "Maps" application links to the "viewstate.php" page
2

Instructions

The project proved incredibly easy to setup.

- Limited soldering need (to connect the ultrasound sensor to the TTGO module, see instructions in the "hardware" section

- Simple components (even if the project involves both IOT, web and connectivity parts, each of them are very simple). This simplicity comes at the price of security, but is it very easy to harden it (see next section).
3

Further improvment possibilities

a) Adding a “subscription web page” allowing a user to enter his/her email address and to get an email warning whenever the parking slot state changes

b) Adding security layers (HTTPS / encryption of the send <-> receiver communication / password on the webpage)

View all 3 instructions

Discussions

The Internet of Parkings

Description

Details