bc hacks 5 · 1st place
ParkView
A real-time parking tracker built in 36 hours at BC HACKS 5 in January 2024. First place, lots of coffee, minimal sleep.
what did we do?
I would like to thank my friend Omar Ankit for inviting me to join his team. We ended up winning 1st place with our project ParkView. When deciding what to build, we wanted to steer away from anything related to social networks and focus on creating something valuable on its own. We brainstormed the problems we face in our daily lives and initially considered building an app to help students find study spaces on campus, as it's a nightmare during exam season.
While in the library, we discussed the idea with a librarian, who liked it but encouraged us to tackle even bigger problems with the same concept. That's how we pivoted to PARKING. Our campus is known to be a tough place to find parking. So we decided to build ParkView, a parking tracker that provides real-time monitoring of parking spaces, integrated with a user-facing mobile app, updating the graphical map of the parking space in real-time.
how we did it?
We used OpenCV for image processing to detect whether parking spots were occupied by cars through live video feed or prerecorded footage. We created a custom python graphical user interface (GUI) that would allow the user to set the parking positions, which were stored in a JSON file. That same JSON would be sent to our user-facing mobile app, built using React Native. The mobile app displayed available parking spots in real time with green/red boxes, updating the map as cars came and went.
ok but why?
The applications for ParkView are vast. We could see this being used in malls, airports, and any other parking lots where available spaces are time consuming to find. Beyond the obvious benefits of convenience and time-saving, this could be a game changer for people with disabilities who need to find the closest parking spot. Additionally, ParkView could be integrated into smart city infrastructures to monitor parking spaces and provide real-time data to city planners. It could help reduce traffic congestion, optimize parking management, and enhance urban planning.