Cpe 322 /
Joseph Truncale (Diagrams and Descriptions)
Clifford Hults (SWOT and Report Assembly)
Lucas Bilar (Research)
Muhammad Abdul Rahman (Research)
Brian Tagalog
3/25/2011 /
Mobile iPhone application for an EZ-Park system using Bluetooth & GPS technology to alleviate parking issues from major cities.
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Overall System Diagram (figure 1)
- Sun (source) – The Source of the energy for our EZ-Park System.
- Sunlight (connection) – The energy used to power the EZ-Park System.
- GPS Signal (connection) - The signal used to communicate coordinates from the GPS Satellite.
- GPS Satellite (source) – The technology used to triangulate the location of the EZ-Park System.
- Bluetooth Signal (connection) – The signal used to communicate with the Mobile Phone Application and Hardware.
- Mobile Phone (interface) – The device needed to communicate with the EZ-Park system. This device is also in charge of communicating with the server to submit payment and also to verify parking spot eligibility.
- Display – Used to display whether the user is in a valid parking space with accepted payment or whether one of these in invalid. (Display: Valid/Invalid).
Software Communication Diagram (figure 2)
- Mobile Phone (source) – See Figure 1. #6
- Servers (source) – The CPU and Web Services used to verify payment using credit card or PayPal information. Also to be used in comparing the location of the parked car with the parking database in order to confirm that the spot chosen is in fact valid. In addition, the server will be used to cache the locations of the vehicles in order to keep track of currently unavailable spots.
- EZ-Park Microprocessor (source) – The basis of the EZ-Park device where all of the sensors and modules will be connected. The GPS chip and display will both directly interface with the EZ-Park Microprocessor in order to facilitate the sending of the data provided by the mobile phone.
- Credit Card Information (data) - One of the pieces of data that will be entered by the user directly into the mobile phone application and in turn sent to the servers.
- Location – The GPS coordinates that are requested by the EZ-Park device and in turn sent to the microprocessor. From the microprocessor, they are sent to the mobile phone and then to the servers for record keeping purposes.
- Parking Authorization Status – Once given GPS coordinates, the server will relay a message to the mobile phone that indicates that both the parking space and payment is valid or invalid. This information will then be relayed to the EZ-Park device. The Device will then be in charge of instructing the display (figure 1. #7) to show either “Valid” or “Invalid”.
Strengths:
It allows many users to take the annoyance of finding a parking spot out of their lives, and we all know how time consuming this may be at times. This device in the long run could also fix the traffic situation in many areas. Take New York City for example. If you've ever been driving in the city and have tried to look for a parking spot, it takes upwards of 20-30 minutes just to find one, let alone one your car could fit in. This device would allow people to quickly and easily find a parking spot. If enough people are using the device, then less cars would be on the road.With less cars on the road, trafficproblemswould be alleviated. If it's a step towards better flow of traffic, more people would buy them, thus increasing profits and popularity. This would only be a relatively minor improvement to the traffic issue, but every piece counts.
Weaknesses:
One of our overall weaknesses is the for the consumer to purchase the device. If the device's cost remains unsubsidized to the public, it may not be revered as we would have hoped. It needs to still give the driver an overall positive outcome and cash flow verses using the “hunting method” to find a spot. Also, the initial cost of upgrading a city's, or even a small town's, parking system to use this product could easily end up being very costly. We would need to find a way to drive down the overall cost of the products required to make this system work. If not, we may be aimed toward total failure.
Opportunities:
There is always room for improvement for these devices. One opportunity is to implement a prepaid system to give the drivers another method of payment, or to put a restriction on where the driver would go (i.e. parents would be able to give their child enough money to go to their destination and they wouldn't be able bring the car elsewhere).
Threats:
New York City recently updated their parking system to use the ticket booth system, the same one Hoboken uses on Washington Street, where you buy a ticket for a certain amount of time and put it in your window. This is a trend that's been happening with multiple cities. It is cheap and easily accessible to all drivers. It also cuts the cities costs as there are less and less parking meters to maintain and/or replace all over the city.This drives the cities costs way down, as you would only need one multi-space meter for upwards of twenty standard meters.
A few years ago, there was a product named CometTM that was released into the market as a personal parking meter (in-car meter).This was very much a similar idea where you had a prepaid system in the car, which allowed you to conveniently park without looking for the change required for a standard meter. It was very popular amongst the handicapped, elderly, and office workers on the go.