A Prototype to Identify Availability of a Car in a Smart Car Park with Aid of Programmable Chip and Infrared Sensors

This project is an attempt to automate major processes of manual Car Parking System including availability checking of a car through sensor signal output. An automated car parking system known as “Smart Car Park” is currently not available in Sri Lanka. Administers, users and government authorities face many difficulties due to lack of proper car parking system. A need analysis was conducted to ascertain the necessity of such a system through a survey. Since the system can access from several access points, this is a thread based system. The hardware architecture of the prototype consists of a set of infrared emitters and infrared receivers. A signal is generated when a car is parked at a particular slot, transmitting a signal to a programmable chip through wires. The chip is programmed to generate a number, based on availability of each slot. The prototype was validated with two slots in a wooden car park. This architecture is simple and cost effective compared to image processing architecture based on “business system option analysis”. It uses four pre-defined ASCII values in the chip to check availability. The number is fed to a computer through a serial port. Further, the signal can be encrypted in a number format to mitigate security threats. The prototype can be enhanced further by networked microchips. The cost for the prototype was less than USD 10.