Smart Parking System Using Arduino Programming Ekanath 1, Adarsh V 2, Sreejith S 3, Vidya Kamath 4 1,2,3,4 Computer Science, Srinivas School of Engineering Abstract In our modern world where there is a vehicle for every person in every family, the number of vehicles on roads is increasing at a rapid rate. It is natural that the area to park these vehicles in the town is substantially reducing. This has become a major drawback of our modern society. To overcome this problem we have introduced a new and much more efficient way of utilizing parking space. We have designed a model which allocates building for the purpose of parking vehicles and the vehicles are parked automatically in place most suitable for the vehicle s dimensions. The dimension of the vehicle is scanned using sensors and they are used to allocate the space necessary for parking the vehicle. An efficient algorithm is used to optimize the space provided to park maximum number of vehicles. Proper system for identification of the car and accurate retrieval of the car is made. This new system can be very effective to be introduced in cities and areas where traffic could be disturbed by parked vehicles near the road. In cities with more vehicle density we can implement this to reduce the density by effectively utilizing the space on the parking lot. This paper mainly proposes the idea behind the working of our system and its efficiency. Keywords Ultrasonic sensor, internet, Open source Electronics Prototyping Platform, reservation, allocation, Ardino, Application for parking. I. INTRODUCTION Nowadays, the main curse of the modern cities which boasts to be well developed with most modern transport facilities is that they do not have proper parking system that utilizes the space in the parking lot efficiently. The existing system uses Human-to-Human interactions to find the space for parking their vehicles. This is very less efficient. It is a loss of space as well as human resource. When people visit a mall or a commercial complex they face the difficulty of parking their car in the right spot and retrieving it. This is a very time consuming process when the time of their visit is during a rush or at peak hours. They find the difficulty of the parking space getting filled fast or cannot find proper parking space that could fit in their car s dimensions. All these problems propose a multilevel parking space. This multilevel parking space will definitely increase the space efficiency of the parking lot. People who have already reached the destination in urban areas will be looking for a shade to park their cars. This desperate run could result in more fuel consumption which further leads to increased pollution. Imagine how much vehicles would be roaming to find a parking spot in an urban area, and how much such urban areas would be there. The figures are huge. In our new proposed system, we use smart ways to locate parking spots and use multilevel automated parking. This will lead to the solution of finding a parking spot, by giving the location on the drivers GPS using Google maps. This leads to saving time, fuel, and also results in less pollution. This system is helpful to save the time in the driver s point of view, to find the right space on the parking space. This is done in order to fit in the car s dimensions, by scanning the dimensions of the car automatically and fitting the car into the correct spot in the multilevel parking space. This helps DOI:10.23883/IJRTER.2018.4181.V8CBX 675
to save the trouble of the driver to find and park in congested spaces. Above that, the trouble of another car parked which could result in the difficulty of retrieving the car will also be solved. The car will be automatically parked and retrieved to the driver. The driver will be identified at the parking time using a QR code sent to his Smartphone. This QR code can be used by the driver at the time of retrieval of his car. This system is also very cost efficient. We will be using solar panels as the main source of energy to provide an eco-friendly system. Use of hydraulic lifts again reduces power consumption. There will be alternate power supply when in case the solar power availability is less. Still that won t be much power consumption. The system uses smart phones and android technology which is available to almost everyone nowadays. Use of these cost efficient mechanisms can successfully implemented under 15lakhs for the machinery set up. The cost of the building would vary from place to place. We have also planed and reduced the number of sensors used which in turn reduces the cost of the setup as well as the power consumption. This system would give a boost to the modern society by solving one of its major drawbacks of less parking availability, and difficulty in parking at tight spots and roadsides. Now let s move on to see its details. II. SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE Figure 1: System Architecture 2.1. Arduino Uno r3. We will be using Arduino Uno r3 based on Arduino Programming running on Arduino in this System. It is open-source microcontroller board based on the ATmega328P microcontroller and developed by Arduino. Intel Quark (x86) 32bit CPU are using in this Bourd. SRAM being used in this board and Flash, EEPROM are being used in the Storage. This model which has a configuration of 16MHz clock speed has a 5v operating voltage, 7-20v input voltage, dc Current per I/O pin is @IJRTER-2018, All Rights Reserved 676
20mA, 32KB Flash memory, 2KB SRAM, 1KB EEPROM and one serial port in arduino Uno r3 board. The system uses total 20 pins to interact with hardware and in these 20 pins 14 pins will be using Digital I/O pin and 6 will be Analog pins. 2.2. Ultrasonic sensor. As you may already know, an Ultrasonic sensor is an electronic device which is used to sense distance of the object. It is also used to measure height of an object. Ultrasonic wave is used in Ultrasonic sensor detection. Every Ultrasonic sensor has a transmitter and a receiver. Ultrasounds are sound waves that are above 20MHz. In this sensor transmitter s convert s electric signal into ultrasound, receivers convert ultrasound into electrical signals, and transceivers can both transmit and receive ultrasound. We will be using these sensors to measure the height of cars that emerge for our parking slots. When the Ultrasonic sensor does not detect any object in front of it, it returns the value FALSE and a car cannot be parked if its dimensions don t match the ones mentioned while booking a slot. 2.3. LED. LED are light emitting diodes. They are semiconductor devices used to convert electrical energy to light energy. A total of four LEDs have been used in the model. Two for gate indication and two for Height indication, and Red and Green LED are used in the entrance. If we scan the QR code, and find it valid, then the green LED will blink and if not, then the red LED will blink. Next two LEDs are placed on both side of Ultrasonic sensor. If sensing is completed then green LED will be activated, else red LED will be constantly ON. 2.4. Other tools used Arduino software, an open source programming language which can be expanded through C++ libraries has been used for development purpose. L298N a motor driver board serves the purpose to control the motor working. A connection dashboard is used for the connection of hardware and system software.using serial port, we have connected arduino to the computer. All Arduino boards have been mutually connected and it has easily communicated with each arduino board. Using this we can pass any value easily to any other arduino boards. This setup has successfully worked for the model and we assume it to be one of the best choices while considering the cost, efficiency and time. Figure 2: Connection dashboard III. IMPLEMENTATION & WORKING OF THE SYSTEM 3.1. Allocating of parking space. The information about free parking spaces in the nearby locations will be available and will be provided to the user from the system. The user has the choice to select any nearby parking lot and @IJRTER-2018, All Rights Reserved 677
book a free space for parking. As a note, to be able to do this, the user should be using a pre-installed app connected to the internet, which provides the user with the necessary information about free parking spaces nearby. Once the user selects any of the parking lot, he can use the pre-installed app to book a parking slot, and the booking requires the user to register by entering his credentials, while booking the slot for the first time. Later on bookings need just a login using user name and password, which was created while registering for the first time. Once the user logs in, he will be asked to enter the model number of his car in order to calculate the dimensions of the car and to allocate a slot large enough to park the car. Once the parking slot has been allocated, a QR code will be generated by the app for the user. 3.2. Communication between user and server. The details entered by the user while registering are stored in the database by the server. Once the user books a parking slot, the server has to create a QR code using zxing library which is unique for every user. The user has to scan the QR code once he reaches the gate of the parking lot, the server has to verify the QR code by cross referencing the details present in the scanned QR code with the details present in the data base. The user or the driver is allowed access into the parking lot only if the QR scanning is successful. Once the car is stored in a parking slot the details of the slot is automatically entered and updated on to the QR code for the purpose of retrieval of the car. During the retrieval of the car, user has to scan the QR code which has been generated by the app once again. 3.3. Optimal Allocation. The server allows the user to choose the nearest parking lot with available parking spaces. This saves the user a great amount of time and fuel, if not for this model he would have spent in search of free parking spaces. 3.4. Backend. We have used MYSQL database management system to store our data in forms of table through myphpadmin. For efficient working and communication of the server, application and database backend devices are using server side language to build an application and data storage tools to find changes and save data and serve it back to the user. 3.5. Sensors. The parking space is allocated on the basis of the height of the car. To get the height we use Ultrasonic sensors. An ultrasonic sensor is a device that can measure an object by sending out a sound wave at a specific frequency and listening for that sound to bounce back. The sensor measure the height of the car and send it back to the server, which then checks weather the height of the car is more than the maximum height which can allocated for parking. If the height of the car exceeds the maximum height then it is not possible to allocate a parking space. If not the car is allocated a parking slot. 3.6. LED and Display screen. An LED and a Display is used to notify the driver, about things such as if the height exceeds the maximum height the red LED glows and the screen displays that the car exceeds the maximum height or if the QR code doesn t match the red LED glows notifying the user that he hasn t booked any slots in this parking slot. The Green LED will only glow if the driver had already booked a parking slot and the QR code matches with database allowing the user to park his car. @IJRTER-2018, All Rights Reserved 678
3.7. Data Analysis. 3.7.1 QR scanner. When the user books a parking slot using the pre-installed app, it generates a QR code. The QR code is created using the details entered such as the booking time and the model number of the car. This information is required because, the server should check whether parking slots are available at the time the user books the parking slot and the model number is used because the server has to check whether the height of the car exceeds the maximum height. This QR code is scanned at the parking lot using a web camera, and the user is allowed to park the car if and only if the QR code scanning is successful. 3.7.2 System Logs. The server stores the details of all the transactions, bookings and the details of every user which has previously booked for parking using the pre-installed app. Figure 3: Working state of our model 3.8. Platform. We have created the android application using android studio. The programming language used to develop the application is JAVA. IV. PROTOTYPE IMPLEMENTATION 4.1. Hardware Prototype. Hardware prototype contains Arduino Uno r3 boards, L298N board to control the motors used in the model, Arduino Ethernet shield used to connect the model to internet using LAN cable and to access the details from the database, a 16x2 display screen is used, ultrasonic sensor and humidity sensor is used to measure the accurate height of the car, motors and hydraulic lifts are used to lift the car up to the parking slot and lower it back, and a webcam is used to scan the QR code. 4.2. Android Application Prototype. Our android application contains one touch booking option, which shows booking status. At a time only one booking is possible for particular ID. By using this android application we can easily track nearest location and we can easily share QR code through this application. @IJRTER-2018, All Rights Reserved 679
Figure 4: Login form Figure 5: Menu Bar V. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE SCOPE Various problems faced by the drivers for parking their cars in busy townships can be solved by this proposed system in this paper. Driver can find and park their vehicle with at most comfort while saving their time. In future the proposed system can be established all over the public sector resulting in an overall enhanced experience for the drivers. It can also be used with automated cars which could be possible at most and the results from this are obviously enormous. VI. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The proposed project in this paper is funded by the project members under the academic curriculum of VISVESVARAYA TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY. We are grateful to our guide Mrs. Vidya Kamath, Assistant professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Srinivas School of Engineering, Mangaluru for helping us in preparation of this paper. REFERENCES I. Faiz Shaikh, Nikhilkumar B.S., Omkar Kulkarni, Pratik Jadhav, Saideep Bandarkar A Survey on Smart Parking System, IJIRSET, 10.15680/IJIRSET.2015.0410088. II. Faiz Ibrahim Shaikh, Pratik Nirnay Jadhav, Saideep Pradeep Bandarkar, Omkar Pradip, Kulkarni, Nikhilkumar B. Shardoor Smart Parking System Based on Embedded System and Sensor Network, International Journal of Computer Applications. Volume 140 No.12, April 2016. III. David Kushner, The Making of Arduino IEEE spectrum, 2011-26-10 IV. "Arduino - Introduction". arduino.cc. V. "LED". The American heritage science dictionary. Houghton Mifflin Company. 2005. led and LED. VI. http://education.rec.ri.cmu.edu/content/electronics/boe/ultrasonic_sensor/1.html VII. VIII. El Mouatezbillah Karbab, Djamel Djenouri, Sahar Boulkaboul, Antoine Bagula, CERIST Research Center, Algiers, Algeria University of the Western Cape, Cape town, South Africa, Car Park Management with Networked Wireless Sensors and Active RFID,978-1-4799-8802-0/15 2015 IEEE. Graph data from: Hongwei Wang, Wenbo He A Reservation based Smart Parking System, 2011 IEEE Conference, 10.1109/INFCOMW.2011.5928901. @IJRTER-2018, All Rights Reserved 680