FastPrk

Worldsensing, an IoT pioneer from Spain with a core expertise in sensing technologies, engaged DA-14 in the IoT application development of their complex analytics software. We built the front-end for the web application to monitor hardware components of the smart parking software.

Client’s Background

Worldsensing is a leading player in Smart City innovations and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, with its main headquarters in Barcelona. Founded in 2008, the company launched their first project, Fastprk, in 2010, and soon expanded into global markets, with new offices in London (UK) and Los Angeles (USA). Today, Worldsensing has customers in over 50 countries and offers end-to-end solutions for construction, mining, infrastructure operations, city management, etc.  

The challenge

Our main challenge was to build an AngularJS application that would quickly process large volumes of streaming data and display the real-time information without lags. With performance considerations in mind, we used the best practices and concepts of JavaScript software development and later optimized the code to boost the speed.

Importance

Parking expenses account for a third of the total cost of car ownerships across US, UK, and Germany. This includes parking fees as well as other hidden costs. Drivers waste time and money looking for a vacant spot, and, in addition, often overpay for services (for example, when a parking spot has 2-hour rate, and a driver needs only 30 minutes).  

Intelligent solutions can ease the above-mentioned problems optimizing by parking management and letting drivers find the empty lot based on cost and location. With the growing demand, the smart parking technologies market is expected to exceed $5.5 billion by 2024.

Our Approach

Creating a visual-rich dashboard

Our JavaScript software engineer contributed to the development of a complex interactive dashboard and integrated it with the existing back-end part. To visualize data, Google Charts and Google Maps were embedded into the parking lot software design.

Focusing on performance

While working on the project, we constantly analyzed the application performance and revealed and eliminated bottlenecks by optimizing the code.  We also upgraded the app to the latest available AngularJS version, which allowed us to speed up data loading.

The project

Fastprk is an intelligent wireless system that allows for efficient management of parking resources and, as a result, generating extra revenue. It is driven by high-performance sensors embedded into parking spaces to detect whether they are empty or not. The system uses long-range radio waves to transmit data to gateways - devices that receive radio signals from sensors and send them to servers via the Internet.

Fastprk offers a unique monitoring software which allows clients to manage hardware. The application analyzes the behavior of sensors and gateways within a chosen period of time, and raises an alarm in case of any issues, thus preventing critical situations.

The solution can facilitate operations in any area with restricted parking such as:

• outdoor city parking spaces
• airports
• shopping malls
• on-street drop-off zones
• college/university campuses

Main Functionality

Login screen

To enter the web app, users have to input their credentials on the login page. The system enables working with several different networks, so the clients can select the most preferable one for the current session.

Tactical overview

The main ‘Tactical overview’ dashboard shows the status of all sensors and gateways connected to the network. The screen provides general information about activities and alarms from the previous month. The data is represented in a clear visual form, with series of graphs, charts, and an interactive map.

Device list

It gives more detailed information on each sensor or gateway, including its status, battery voltage, etc. The list allows for sorting, filtering, and selecting more than one device at the same time.  It also contains a map similar to one on the main screen.

Device detail

Users can get extra information about any device by clicking the ‘More’ button. The ‘Device detail’ screen contains static data (ID, installation date), graphs with health metrics, a map that shows the location of the particular device, tables with recent issues, and the latest messages received from the device.

Involvement

Duration: March 2014 - October 2014

Team:

• Project manager
• Front-end developer

Contract type: Fixed price

Project investment: N/A

Technologies & Integrations:

• AngularJS
• HTML/CSS
• Google Maps
• Google Charts
• Bower
• Grunt

Country: Spain

Industry: Parking Facilities / Internet of Things (IoT)

Project type: Monitoring application for IoT system