methodology
The Problem
San Jose State University is currently in a perpetual parking crisis, that of which brings various problems to the table. Parking supply is unable to suffice for the immense commuter volume at SJSU, causing traffic congestion, and making commuters' mornings extremely tedious. Being that San Jose is an urban, workfoce driven city, traffic congestion often occurs in the morning; emissions from idling cars poses another issue caused by SJSU's parking crisis.
SJSU currently has approximately 5000 parking spaces for commuters— 1445, 1135, 1445, and 1100 for South Garage, West Garage, North Garage, and Park & Ride, respectively. With approximately 35,000 students and 33% being commuters, demand currently outpaces supply for parking spaces, causing a surge of commuters to make their commutes to campus early in order to secure a parking space.
Targeted Issues:
Traffic Time
Parking Capacity
Carbon Emissions
The Solution
Spartan Earlybird is a modern solution to an ancient issue— a mobile parking-application that creates a network of data displayed from phyical parking sensor meters, eliminating the ambiguity of parking space availibility for SJSU commuting students. This application was created to reduce commute times, traffic congestion, and carbon emissions for all students who commute to SJSU.
The premise of this application is to incentivize a new ride-share program at SJSU in which students are enabled to carpool. It is comprised of two "user types"— drivers and passengers. During days of instruction, on every night at 9PM prior to the day of carpool, Spartan Earlybird will use pairing algorithms to match passengers with drivers that need to go to school at the same time until each driver's car is full. The application will utilize the data from the parking sensor meters to display various parking information in all SJSU parking locations such as which specific spots are open, and an estimate as to when the occupied spot will be open based on student schedules.
Integration:
Integration of Spartan Earlybird dives into the realms of the Web of Things (WoT) in order to create a smart-parking-system. On the hardware side, this project requires items such as a Raspberry Pi, breadboard, LTE stick with microSD card, and an ultrasonic sensor to pair with the web side of things.
The integration of service-oriented architecture and web enablement into SJSU's parking structures follows a rather simple methodology: the first step is installing the ultrasonic sensor (which tells us if the parking spot is occupied) to the breadboard, and the breadboard to the Raspberry Pi. After that, the second step is installing the LTE stick to the Raspberry Pi, giving it internet access. Lastly, programming is required so that the Pi can act as the brain of the system. This system will be paired with the Spartan Earlybird application to display the status of various parking spots and enable the ability to reserve such spots.
