SpotFinder – Where Can I Park?

I finally finished my first app at Progress Software named SpotFinder, which you can try here. SpotFinder allows you to view the real-time availability of parking spaces in your local area using parking sensor data provided by a startup called VIMOC. They provide a computing platform which enables municipalities to aggregate and process sensory data. Municipalities are using this to manage traffic and parking congestion. For information about what they do, visit their website here. The web app is hosted on a Modulus server and runs on a simple Node server using Express as a web framework and linked to an Angular client app. These tools have enabled me to develop my web app quickly. Modulus provides a hosting platform which simplifies deployment. Express allows you to write fewer lines of server-side code. Angular makes it easier for displaying dynamic views since it uses directives. The system is configured where the client app sends an AJAX request to the Node server for it to run processes and return information. In this project, the Node server makes HTTP requests to VIMOC’s API, which has data on the coordinates of the parking sensors in a zone and which parking spots are occupied. The server joins the coordinates and occupancy data and returns that information for the client to display shown below. The client loads a Google Maps image by using the Angular Google Maps API and then populates the map with pins. In this demo, there are 22 pins located on Ramona Street in Downtown Palo Alto, where the parking sensors have been installed. The green pins indicate where the parking spots are vacant and the red pins indicate where the parking spots are occupied. Thank you VIMOC for letting us use your parking API! The VIMOC API also includes analytics on parking data including the average duration of parking events, the turnover of parking spaces per hour, vacancy and occupancy rate. I hope that this article has sparked some ideas around sensor data in IoT (Internet of Things). What projects are you excited about in IoT? Feel free to leave some comments or questions below.

If you enjoyed reading this article, you may also enjoy reading about the mobile app Spotter that Antony Bello developed, which finds the nearest vacant parking spot near you. It uses NativeScript, a framework for creating iOS and Android apps using only Javascript and CSS. Pretty neat, huh?