How to Build IoT-based Smart Parking Management System

Urbanizing is expanding, but at what cost? Traffic. Overcrowding.

According to research, 30% of traffic is caused by parking, especially in big cities! This percentage could be even higher by 2025. Mismanagement of available parking spaces and an increasing number of vehicles on the road – such traffic congestion has forced the introduction of a smart parking system! This modern technology optimizes parking space usage and helps streamline traffic flow. So, what is exactly smart parking? How to develop a smart parking management system that can be beneficial to your company? Let’s discuss it all in detail.

What is Smart Parking System?

Smart parking system is a software solution that incorporates IoT technologies such as sensing devices, cameras, or counting sensors to identify which parking area is occupied or available and often uses this sensor data to design a real-time parking map.

Such sensors communicate with the gateway and transfer the real-time data to the cloud. The availability of parking slots is then automatically demonstrated by vehicle detection sensors. It can also be seen on the software or app mounted on the available slots so that space can be quickly detected by the drivers.

How Smart Parking System Works?

Before you directly jump into the car parking application development process, you must know how the web application works from the user’s point of view. So, here are the steps to consider.

1. User Send Car’s Location

   • Smartphone navigator enables GPS location in the app once downloaded
   • Users send the car’s location to the parking provider in the smart city

2. Look for Space Availability

   • The app provides a variety of parking slots for a better experience
   • The user checks the occupied and available parking spaces of the area

3. Parking Garage Allotment

   • The app, if available, recommend the parking spot to the navigator
   • Drivers also compare recommended slots by price or distance to find the perfect match

4. Book & Start Parking

   • The users reserve the selected parking lot and get an access code
   • A location-based solution then would direct the vehicle to start parking in the available lot

5. Offer Parking Discount

   • If any, the service provider would offer a discount on the go before finally settled on the real-time parking space
   • Once the transaction is done, the navigator starts parking

6. Finish Parking & Billing

   • After the parking period is over, the app will notify the provider
   • User unpark the vehicle and pay the billing amount as the fee

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Advantages of Smart Parking System Software

While the IoT-based parking management system software help finds available parking space faster, it also benefits the company with revenue and much more. Let’s discuss the benefits of a smart parking management system.

• Reduced Traffic & Pollution: When the driver knows where to go exactly, it decreases excessive driving, thereby improving traffic movements in built-up areas. The smart parking lot management software gives an option for a quick vehicle park experience and lowers the pollution of cars standing idle in the parking lot waiting for space.
• Real-Time Monitoring: Automated parking solutions tend to simplify the search and speed up the parking process, resulting in less guesswork and less unpredictability in the search for available space. IoT (internet of things) technologies help locate a space in a new town and track the occupancy of parking facilities in real-time to guarantee that the time of drivers is not wasted when driving through jam-packed parking lots.
• Optimized Parking: The parking software solutions encourage drivers to find the best available position easily, which saves time, money, and effort. This way, the available area will be effectively used, depending on the different variables when assigning the position, such as vehicle height, weight, etc.
• Reduced Costs: Another benefit you get from providing an efficient system of parking management is the cost. You save more cash because it runs on low manpower. More mechanization and less manual action save money on work costs. By automatic processes, data, and delivering targeted compliance operations, intelligent parking systems technology will reduce these overheads.
• Enhanced Services: With the use of cutting-edge parking management technology and accessibility considerations, visitors will certainly be satisfied, whether the destination is a convenience store, an airport, or a corporate business office. Such a seamless parking experience would fully skyrocket the brand image of the customer of a corporate or commercial enterprise.
• Increased Revenue: Vehicle detection sensor data reveals clear visibility into which spaces or locations have higher and lowest traffic. That ultimately allow businesses beyond working hours to decide where more parking is to be expanded and where to cut back accordingly to generate incremental revenue from their parking lots.

How to Build IoT Based Smart Parking Solution?

Going ahead, here we have mentioned step by step parking guidance for the app building process that you may want to look at.

1. Identify Your Goals

   To be a smart parking market industry leader, a strongly structured business strategy will assist you to achieve success. It all starts with the core appeal of your IoT app. You may consider asking questions like,

   • What are the tangible parking demand and parking challenges that you can solve?
   • Is that going to be a map of parking control or just assistance?
   • Will it have features for identifying and paying for parking spots?
   • Who will be your target audience?
   • Which latest software technologies you can use for development?
   • How much time will it take to reach your profits equal to your costs?

   Outline all of these and you will realize your business potentials.

2. Form a Legal Entity

   Next, you may want to create a corporate legal entity like LLC. If the parking lot is charged, this would prevent parking lot owners from being directly responsible. To do so, you should use a licensed agent that can protect your privacy and remain compliant.

3. Find Funding

   For parking spaces where you wish to have a car parking facility, you can gather information about the average sale price. To check if you have appropriate credit ratings to apply for a commercial loan, contact a loan officer or a credit union. You may also contact small business administrations that provide entrepreneurs who want to launch their venture with low-interest loans.

   If you want to understand a complete app funding guide, refer to our detailed blog where you may find answers to all your questions.

4. Design All Specifications

   Once you have enough resources and funds, you can start designing the important aspects where you can,

   • Find the location of your vehicle space
   • Estimate prices you want to charge to your users
   • Organize space lot and battery life for improved parking experience
   • Think of safety and security

5. Find App Development Team

   It’s time to take your company online once settling on all of the above steps. You need to create a smartphone IoT app, and for that, we suggest recruiting a custom mobile app development company that helps you from the idea to the launch of your mobility solutions.

6. Build & Test

   This stage is handled by your hired app development team where you find ideas and features blend into a clearer picture. To create both the backend and the frontend, the team will set up databases, servers, APIs, storage solutions, radar technology etc. After the team develops the smart parking solution, the quality analyst will run the IoT product through quality assurance and make it a complete bug-free, so that you can release it effectively.

Unique Features of Parking Mobile Apps

While you think of creating a mobile app project for the parking industry, the following are the features of a smart parking system that you may want to integrate.

Traditional vs Automated Parking System

For a long time, conventional systems have been in operation for the car park. Technology took over with time and automatic garages came into being. So, let’s take a look at how the conventional vs. automatic car parking space management system varies.

Conclusion

Despite the parking sector flowing with a lot of parking solutions already, there is a lot of scopes for start-up companies to develop user-friendly parking applications that have far more functionality than current market apps. However, the development of such apps needs planning and there are a lot of variables to pay attention to and functionality to incorporate. So if you have any app ideas for your company, contact us. We are a leading software development agency to help you in each process development. For more queries, you can schedule a free consultation with our experts!