The most irritating problem that car owners in a heavy traffic ridden city face is to find a spot to park their car. Finding a parking spot in a parking lot, airport or near offices many times become a serious problem and cost people a lot of money and other resources like time and fuel.
This problem is growing every day and to bring it down we need to implement some smart parking solutions. is a revolutionary solution for this matter and its prototype projects are already running in many cities.
Just as your Smartphone or smart refrigerator, these smart parking lots are linked to many internet-enabled devices; in other words, the whole parking lot is made IoT (Internet of Things) enabled. Internet of Things is the technology, using which we can connect our surrounding devices, especially those devices which could never have been internet friendly before IoT.
How Does Smart Parking IoT Work?
IoT enabled smart parking makes use of low-cost sensors and mobile apps that give out real-time information about the availability and location of parking space. Small sensors are installed on the road surface for each individual spot in the parking lot.
Now, these sensors at each parking spot give out an individual real-time status update of its availability to a nearby server. The data could also be transferred to the cloud. From there a base station is set up. Such base stations have the capacity to serve thousands of devices in the vicinity of around 4 sq. Miles for urban cities and 10 sq miles for suburban regions.
For the enterprises who own multiple parking lots across the city, such base stations are very cheap to set up as they cover a long range. So, the number of base stations to be set radically reduces. Also, the sensors mounted in the lots have very low setup and maintenance cost as they are designed to withstand mechanical pressure from the vehicle and also their working is very low-powered which makes their batteries last almost 10 years.
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Benefits Of Smart Parking IoT:
Real-Time Info:
With real-time updates, the user doesn’t remain unknown about available parking spot and gets a precise list of empty spots. This real-time data gives information about user preferences to the parking lot owner to help decide what type of modifications are needed according to their user behavior.
Location Info:
The sensors won’t just inform about the availability of parking space but will also give its exact location in the lot. Due to this, much of the time is saved as users know exactly which floor and which aisle to go to.
Integrated Payment Options:
Most of the people that use parking lots are frequent users as their offices, colleges or other every day visiting establishments are nearby to the parking lot. For such users, paying their parking fee manually every day could be tiresome and time-consuming so an additional feature of integrated payment modules can be added to this system so that they can complete their daily payment transaction digitally without wasting any time.
Low Pollution:
All the time saved for manually searching for a parking spot and roaming around the lot with your car increases fuel consumption. It’s a shocking fact that a million barrel of oil is consumed just for the purpose of finding a parking spot. Smart parking system using IoT saves all this fuel and lowers pollution while doing this.
Lower Cost Of Operation:
When the smart parking uses IoT system, the process becomes automated which leads to a lower manual input to this process. Lower manual input prompts to lower labor cost which in turn decreases operational cost.
User Experience:
Due to such smart parking solutions, customers get a very user-friendly experience which makes them come back to your establishment. Compared to old parking lots where the user has to drive through aisles until they find a place to park their car, this definitely becomes the best alternative that any user would opt instead of the old way.
Conclusion:
The Smart Parking System using IoT is by far the most user-friendly solution with very low installation as well as operational cost. This becomes a win-win situation for both, the user as well as the parking lot owner. Opting for Smart parking solution will be the best business step for parking lot owners and a really great and beneficial experience for the users.