Are you tired of queuing at the payment machine in the parking lot?
Are you annoyed some payment machines only take cash?
Are you frustrated that you left the ticket in the car and have to walk all that distance twice?
Are you annoyed someone exiting the parking lot lost their ticket so the lane is clogged?
Do you sometimes go on the kerb accidentally just because you want to stop closer to the barrier ticket machine?
Are you unhappy that the automatic number-plate recognition doesn't always work?
Do you have too many parking membership cards for different parking lots?
Have you ever actually found or received a refund on a lost parking membership card?
PIMS, solves it all!

Introduction   |   Stakeholders   |   Product report   |   Pitch video

Parking Iot Management System is designed for easy access to public parking lots. It is like a toll-pass (FasTrak or E-ZPass) in the US or ETC in China, but used on parking lots. Every person wishing to use this system needs to obtain a key (M5Stick) and register their personal and vehicle information on the PIMS website. With a key in hand, the driver can park in any participating parking lot, all they need to do is to press the key (M5Stick) to enter, and press to exit. The barrier, controlled by M5Stack, receives the request together with the key's bluetooth address from the M5Stick, and verifies the user's account at desktop app via the broker (MQTT). If successful, the barrier (M5Stack) will lift up to let the car in/out. The system will track the car's parking time and calculate with the tariff of the parking lot's, then charge the payment from customer's account.

With this system, the drivers can save the time of paying at the machine. With cars leaving the parking lot quicker, more cars are able to park in the lot during a busy day.

Our product is designed for 3 different end users: customers, drivers, and parking lot managers. Customers can be personal customers or business customers. They are the online account holders and vehicle owners. Drivers can be anyone legally driving the vehicles that have the key (M5Stick) mounted in. The customer and driver can be the same person. Parking lot managers are administratives who minitor the parking lots.

To make the picture clear, we will introduce 3 typical user stories.

Leo is sick and tired of the situations mentioned above . He sees the advertisement of PIMS and decides to make his life easier by using it.He goes onto PIMS website and orders a key (M5Stick). After the key arrives, he opens an account with PIMS. He finds its bluetooth sequence in the instruction booklet and enters it along with his car's vehicle identification number. Ta-da! Account created. Now whoever drives his car can use PIMS service for participating parking lots. He can also review how many hours and where he has parked for the past 7 days.

Professor Smith works at University of Bristol. The university has a business membership with PIMS, which means all the cars registered under the university's account has a M5Stick and the expense will be taken from the university's business account. Today Prof. Smith and her research group need to attend a conference in Bath, representing the School of Engineering. The meeting takes place in a conference center with a public parking lot. They are given a university owned minivan to for the trip.

When approaching the entrance, she presses the parking lot key (M5Stick) that was already mounted in the car. Even without stopping, the barrier opens to welcome them in.

After the 5-hour-long conference, Prof Smith and her group are really exhausted and don't want to queue up at the payment machine - the queue looks really long, it's a busy parking lot after all. Luckily, they don't need to! They go straight back to the minivan and start driving back to Bristol. When approaching the exit, without even stopping and opening the window, Prof Smith simply presses the key (M5Stick) and the barrier lifts up to let them out!

Rachel works for a shopping mall. Her job is to manage their parking lot. Her office is pretty close to the parking lot, so she can report any abnormal activities via the app. Whenever she wants, she can open the desktop application to see how many cars are currently in the parking lot and how much revenue they are currently making.

Her boss has asked her to plan for a 2-hour car wash product promotion at the designated area inside the parking lot next Saturday, so she needs to choose a time when the number of targeted customers are at its peak. She opens the desktop app and pulls up the hourly record of the number of cars in the parking lot for the past month. Then she chooses 1-3pm next Saturday for the promotion.

Click here to see:

• Architecture of the entire system
• Requirements of key sub-systems
• Object-Oriented design of key sub-system
• The evolution of UI wireframes for key sub-system
• Details of the communication protocols in use
• Details of the data persistence mechanisms in use
• Details of web technologies in use

Click here to see:

• Implementation timelines
• Technique justificaton and design evaluation
• Social and Ethical implications

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• Success of the project
• Future work
• Working practices of the group
• Coronavirus impact on the project

Here is the video of us demonstrating how the M5Stack (barrier) , M5Stick (the key for drivers), desktop application (for managers) and webpage (for customers) work together via the communication on MQTT.