Monitor the current status of
your e-charging parking space with
Paessler Building Monitor
About Smart City System
Smart City System is a market leader from Germany in the field of smart parking, who solves parking problems with an easy-to-integrate infra-structure and accurate real-time parking data.
Founded in 2017, Smart City System GmbH has grown to 40 team members and has digitalized more than 50,000 parking spaces across Europe with its self-developed sensor technology.
A use case of
Paessler AG in cooperation with
Smart City System
Together with the company Smart City System, we designed the following use case and implemented it directly at our company location in Nuremberg. It is about the exciting, practical, and future-relevant field of parking monitoring, which has a great deal of potential for many companies and for modern urban planning in general. The monitoring tool we used was the latest solution from Paessler AG: Paessler Building Monitor.
Parking today and in the future
Parking, whether in urban car parks or in a business setting (such as corporate or supermarket parking lots), is unfortunately still associated with frustration. The digitalization of parking can make parking a much more pleasant experience. Smart parking helps to avoid annoyances and can make finding a parking space more efficient. After all, in most cities, parking spaces are decidedly limited, finding a free parking space often proves to be a challenge, and nearly 30% of inner-city traffic is generated by the search for a parking space. Employees also often drive to their company parking lot only to have to park elsewhere because all of the available parking spaces are occupied. With the help of smart parking, employees can find a parking space more quickly and companies can comprehensively monitor their parking lots, if required, to take faster action against unauthorized users of their parking spaces, for example.
E-charging parking spaces – a special challenge
There are already applications on the market that check where a free parking space with an e-charging station is available. However, this occupancy data usually only shows whether an electric vehicle is charging at the station or not. This means that an occupancy app, for example, will not show the parking space as occupied if a vehicle, whether it is powered by electricity or internal combustion, is parked in the parking space without charging and is therefore blocking the charging station. When such parking spaces are digitalized, the occupancy status should thus not only be displayed correctly but also in a comprehensive manner: “Free/occupied?” and “Charging/not charging?” are therefore the two relevant questions that have actual significance. We at Paessler have two e-charging stations installed at our Nuremberg HQ in front of two otherwise standard parking spaces. Together with the hardware provided by Smart City System, we have now set about comprehensively monitoring these parking spaces.
Hardware
There are various hardware offerings on the market for the digitalization of parking spaces – from various camera systems to individual parking space sensors. These sensors should usually be preferred because they also work at night and when visibility is impaired due to weather conditions. We also made a conscious decision to work with Smart City System because their physical sensor combines unique features with special durability. It consists of two parts – the sensor housing and its yellow outer ring. The ring is glued to the ground and the sensor is inserted into it. The sensor housing includes a magnetic sensor, a battery, and a radio module. After mounting it on the floor (or optionally on the ceiling, if available), the sensor is calibrated to the earth’s magnetic field, which is unique to each location in the world. The sensor then reacts to any form of change in the magnetic field. As soon as, for example, a vehicle parks above the sensor, the magnetic field changes, the sensor communicates this change, and usable occupancy data (“free/occupied?”) is provided. For the above-mentioned, second meaningful question (“charging/not charging?”), we use the usual sensors of our e-charging stations.
Autonomous system
The sensor-to-software communication works in various ways; NB-IoT sensors, for example, communicate directly via cellular communication without the use of gate-ways. If many parking spaces are simultaneously digitalized with parking sensors, gateways become necessary. It is very convenient that the gateways provided by Smart City System adapt individually to the energy situation available on site. If, for example, a classic gateway (Plug&Play) with its 230V power supply cannot be installed due to a lack of sockets, a completely solar-powered and self-sufficient gateway can be used and attached to streetlamps, for example.
Software
Access to parking space occupancy data is possible in various ways. A simple method is the software of the manufacturer Smart City System, but for this use case, we chose the direct parking data feed into our solution Paessler Building Monitor. There, the data from the e-charging station and the parking sensors converge and make it possible to easily monitor the digitalized parking spaces. An alert notification can be sent, for example, if the maximum parking time of a vehicle is exceeded because it is no longer charging and therefore only blocking the e-charging station. This way, the optimal utilization of the e-charging station can be achieved.
Intrigued? We're happy to hear!
Have we aroused your interest with our development of an efficient monitoring of e-charging parking spaces
in cooperation with Smart City System? Do you have any questions about this use case, about smart parking,
or about other features of Paessler Building Monitor? Then we can’t wait to hear from you.