LIU PARKING CONTROL SYSTEM

Senior Project

by

Mahmoud Houssieny, 11330343

Mohamad Issa, 11230077

Submitted to the School of Engineering of the

Lebanese International University

Beirut, Lebanon

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

BACHELOR OF SCIENCE IN COMPUTER AND COMMUNICATION

ENGINEERING

Spring 2016/2017

Approved by:

Supervisor

Dr. Majd Ghareeb

Committee Member

Dr. Milad Ghantous

First I’d like to dedicate my work to my parent and family since they helped me to get where

I am today. Many thanks for all people who supported me, and to my doctors who played a

big role in my success throughout the three years.

Mahmoud Houssieny

I would dedicate this project to my parent and family who helped me reach that level in my

life and also to my doctors since without their help I would have never gotten this far.

Mohamad Issa

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 ACKNOWLEDGMENT

We would like to thank our supervisor Dr. Majd Ghareeb, the committee member

Dr. Milad Ghantous and also the dean of the school of Engineering Dr. Amin Hajj-Ali and

everyone who spends their effort helping us to finish our project successfully.

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 ABSTRACT

This project implements a parking control system using radio frequency identification

(RFID) technology. This control system will facilitate the utilization of parking spaces and

help the instructor to check the availability of the parking space automatically since the

system is connected to the Internet. The system identifies the user by reading the data from

the RFID tags to the microcontroller and then this data is uploaded from the microcontroller

to the Ethernet network. Finally, the system indicates the available places in the parking.

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS

DEDICATION.........................................................................................................................II

ACKNOWLEDGMENT.......................................................................................................III

ABSTRACT............................................................................................................................IV

TABLE OF CONTENTS........................................................................................................V

LIST OF FIGURES.............................................................................................................VII

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION............................................................................................1

1.1 Background................................................................................................................1

1.2 Problem Statement.....................................................................................................1

1.3 General overview of the project.................................................................................2

1.4 Thesis Outline............................................................................................................3

CHAPTER 2 SURVEY OF EXISTING METHODS AND SIMILAR SYSTEMS...........4

2.1 Introduction................................................................................................................4

2.2 GAO RFID System....................................................................................................4

2.3 Parking Management System.....................................................................................5

2.4 AVI System................................................................................................................6

2.5 Conclusion and Motivation........................................................................................6

CHAPTER 3 SYSTEM DESIGN...........................................................................................7

3.1 Introduction................................................................................................................7

3.2 Requirements and Specification Analysis..................................................................7

3.3 System Architecture...................................................................................................8

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 3.4 Sequence Diagrams....................................................................................................9

3.5 E/R Diagrams...........................................................................................................10

3.6 Sitemap Diagrams....................................................................................................11

3.7 Conclusion................................................................................................................12

CHAPTER 4 IMPLEMENTATION/SIMULATION AND TESTING............................13

4.1 Introduction..............................................................................................................13

4.2 Implementation Tools..............................................................................................13

4.3 Implementation Summary........................................................................................14

4.4 Test Cases and Acceptance Criteria.........................................................................17

4.5 Conclusion................................................................................................................19

CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK......................................................19

5.1 Conclusion................................................................................................................19

5.2 Future Work.............................................................................................................20

APPENDIX A: IMPLEMENTATION DETAILS.............................................................21

APPENDIXB: USER MANUAL.........................................................................................22

APPENDIXC: DEPLOYMENT AND CONFIGURATION MANUAL..........................25

REFERENCES.......................................................................................................................26

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 LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 3-1: System Architecture................................................................................................7

Figure 3-2: Sequence Diagram...................................................................................................8

Figure 3-3: Case Diagram..........................................................................................................8

Figure 3-4: E/R Diagram............................................................................................................9

Figure 3-5: Sitemap Diagram...................................................................................................10

Figure 4-1: Sensors connected to the breadboard....................................................................13

Figure 4-2: RGB leds connected to the breadboard.................................................................13

Figure 4-3: Database................................................................................................................14

Figure 4-4: System specifies the allowed places......................................................................14

Figure 4-5: Login page.............................................................................................................15

Figure 4-6: Add page...............................................................................................................15

Figure 4-7: Offering page.........................................................................................................16

Figure 5-1: Login Page.............................................................................................................19

Figure 5-2: Add.php Page........................................................................................................20

Figure 5-3: Offerings.php Page................................................................................................20

Figure 5-4: Database................................................................................................................21

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 CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background

Parking is a very important issue around the world. People are late to their appointments

not due to them leaving their homes late, but because there is no enough spaces to park their

cars. For example, at the Lebanese International University (LIU) there is a limited parking

space which is not enough for all the instructors that are teaching especially that the number of

students is increasing, which mean that the number of instructors in LIU will increase too. For

this reason, some instructors might not find parking spaces to park their cars which lead them

to block the pathway of other instructor's cars. Nowadays, Technology is developing fast and is

intervening in our everyday life. For this reason, a technical solution must be found to solve the

parking issue.

1.2 Problem Statement

The parking issue is severe in Lebanon .There are no enough places to park, and many

people roam more than one time near the destination they want to visit in order to park their

cars which sometimes lead them to be late. There are some public parks but they are usually

expensive, and these parks are for financial profit and not for solving the parking issue. For

example, at the Lebanese International University (LIU) many instructors complain on the lack

of the parking spaces. There are a lot of solutions applied to manage the parking issue, but each

solution depends on each parking aside. But within all the solution options, none works on the

offering times of the instructors. In this senior project, we will be working on a solution that

will offer 30 extra spots other than the average capacity of the parking.

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1.3 General overview of the project

The main objective of our project is to design and implement an automated parking

system to optimize the capacity of LIU parking. In this system, we will create what we call

dead places that are the places that you are able to park behind them. However, these places

will be given for the instructors who are giving lectures for late hours in the day.

On the other hand, instructors with short working hours (usually part time instructors)

will be allowed to park in the other places that are with free exit whenever they want to leave.

From the above mechanism, we can see that the parking should have a mean to interact

according to each instructor offering. Consequently, the system will require each instructor to

have a way to identify himself when logging into the parking (e.g. RFID), so his offering will

be detected and the places that he is allowed to park in will be lightening in green while other

places will stay with red light.

1.4 Thesis Outline

The upcoming chapters will discuss the project in details:

 Chapter 2 will hold and explain similar systems and existing methods that have been

implemented before including the advantages of our project on other projects.

 Chapter 3 will introduce the system design and the details of the project that will give

reasons of our choice of specific components.

 Chapter 4 includes the system implementation and testing of our project with clear

practical details.

 Chapter 5 summarizes the main points of the project and opens a door on a list of future

steps that could be done to improve the proposed project.

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 CHAPTER 2
SURVEY OF EXISTING METHODS AND SIMILAR SYSTEMS

2.1 Introduction

Our project is not the first or the only project that gives the benefit of “parking control

system”. When you search via internet, you will find a lot of similar systems. But what are

the advantages of our project and how does it differ from others?

In this chapter, we will highlight similar methods that have been implemented before,

and we will cover the advantages and disadvantages of each method.

2.2 GAO Control System

The GAO Parking System is a control and monitoring system that is designed to be

used at university parking areas, hospitals etc. The system works by three main components:

1. GAO Parking Control Software

2. RFID Tags

3. RFID Readers

These three components work together to provide car parking control system. We can benefit

from this system in a way that manages multiple locations from one location but this method is

very expensive to be used.

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2.3 Parking Management System

Parking[2] Management System is very simple to manage and control .The system works

in an easy way that can handled by the parking staff. These parking technologies can be

customized according to the needs and requirements of the parking spaces. But this system is

very expensive to use and benefit from, as we will see below.

2.4 Automatic vehicle identification System

One important reason to embrace AVI[3] systems is the convenience it brings. Vehicle

access control based on normal proximity access control cards or, even worse, barcode, often

results in people leaning uncomfortably out of their windows towards the reader to show their

access credential. The system identifies the cars automatically by scanning the RFID tags that

is located on the windshield of the car. But the major disadvantage of this system is the cost of

equipping each vehicle with a transponder, which can be a major start-up expense, if paid by

the toll agency, or a strong customer deterrent, if paid by the customer.

Table 2-3: Comparison Table

Method Advantages Disadvantages

1-GAO RFID Multiple locations are High Cost

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System
3-AVI System Controls access to area, Cost of equipping each
vehicle with a transponder
allowing only legal parking
in that area.

2.5 Conclusion and Motivation

To conclude, in this chapter we highlighted on different systems to park the cars. Each

System has its own advantages and disadvantages but our system helps the user to check the

availability of the parking in an easy way according to his daily offering.

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 CHAPTER 3
SYSTEM DESIGN

3.1 Introduction

In this chapter we will introduce the interactions between the web application and the

other part(the device). Since the web application is backed up with a database, an E/R

diagram will be presented, in addition to a use case diagram, an architecture design, a site

map diagrams.

3.2 Requirements and Specification Analysis

For the web application a database will be constructed.

 Instructors will require the system to do the following tasks:

 RFID to identify the instructor.

 Automatically recognize daily offering.

 Highlight allowed places accordingly.

 Administrators will be able to perform the following tasks:

 Enter the offering of each instructor to the parking system.

 Update the schedule of each instructor.

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3.3 System Architecture

Figure 3 -1: System Architecture represents a general overview of this system which will

function when an instructor wants to park his car in the parking. The instructor should put his

tag infront of the Reader that will read the data found in the card and send them to Arduino that

is connected to the Ethernet shield in order to connect it to the database server. During this

level the server will undergo a process and send the data to arduino.

Figure 3-1: System Architecture

3.4 Sequence Diagrams

The Arduino Mega controls and identifies the instructor using a RFID Reader that is

used to gather information from the RFID Tag that serve the same purpose as the barcodes in

which every instructor has his own one that contains his data about his offering. Then the

system precise the allowed parking places according to the instructor’s offering. So, his

offering will be detected and the places that he is allowed to park in will be lighted in green

while other places will stay with red light.

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Admin Instructor System Database
Update offering

Submit offering

Enters the parking

Scan RFID

Check RFID

Specifies allowed places

Register parking place

Parks based on the detected

Sensor

Figure 3-2: Sequence Diagram

Figure 3-3: Case Diagram

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3.5 E/R Diagrams

The system has a website that allows the user to add an instructor and his offering to

the database. Figure 3 -4: E/R Diagram shows the E/R diagram of the LIU parking system.

Figure 3-4: E/R Diagram

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3.6 Sitemap Diagrams

This section is meant to introduce the skeleton of the system. We will start from the

website login page and then moving to 2 secured pages: index page and dashboard page. From

the login page the user will be redirected to the admin.php page if he was an admin, he will be

able to reset all offerings, add a new instructor and insert the new offerings.

The add.php page will allow the admin to add a new instructor in the database and

after adding the instructor will return to the admin.php page. The offerings.php page will allow

the admin to insert a new offering of the instructor and also will be return to the admin.php

page.

Login page

Admin page

Add page Offerings page

Figure 3-5: Sitemap Diagram

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3.7 Conclusion

LIU parking control system is a system that is used for the instructors to facilitate the

check of the availability of the parking. In this chapter we showed the design of the

system that presents the activities of each user according to his role.

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 CHAPTER 4
IMPLEMENTATION/SIMULATION AND TESTING

4.1 Introduction

This chapter will introduce the implementation and testing parts of the LIU Control System.

During this chapter we will present and explain the functionality from the client side including

the hardware appliance.

4.2 Implementation Tools

The implementation of the hardware part is done using multi software and parts:

 Arduino IDE [4]

 Arduino MEGA 2560 (microcontroller to control the system)

 Ethernet Shield (to connect the Arduino to the internet)

 Sensors LDR

 Wires

 Breadboard (to solder the Arduino on it)

 Resistors

 Leds

 RFID Reader

 RFID Tags

The implementation of the web application is done using:

 XAMPP to run APACHE server and MYSQL [5]

 MYSQL Database [6]

 PhpMyAdmin for the database of the system [7]

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4.3 Implementation Summary

First, the Arduino MEGA is connected to the sensors in the Bread Board.

Figure 4-6: Sensors connected to the breadboard

Then we connected the RGB leds to the Breadboard.

Figure 4-7: RGB leds connected to the breadboard

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 After finishing with the hardware part, we started with the software part. We used the

arduino 1.8.1 software to program the arduino mega 2560. We created the database that called

“liupark” to save the data in it.

Figure 4-8: Database

4.4 Test Cases and Acceptance Criteria

A. Hardware Implementation:

When each instructor enter to the parking by identifying himself using the

RFID tags, the system specifies the allowed available places according to the

offering of each instructor.

Figure 4-9: System specifies the allowed places

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B. Website:

Login page is the same as Home page. A page that allows the user to login by

entering a specific username and password. Then we have an Add page and

Offering page to insert any instructor the user wants and add the offerings of

each instructor as shown in Figure 4 -10: Login page Figure 4 -11: Add page

and

Figure 4-10: Login page

Figure 4-11: Add page

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 Figure 4-12: Offering page

4.5 Conclusion

In this chapter, we described the hardware implementation of the system in addition to

the implementation tools. We started with the Website implementation and we saw the

implementation for client users and staff users along with the pages for each type.

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 CHAPTER 5
CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK

5.1 Conclusion

The aim of our system is to design and implement an automated system for Lebanese

International University LIU control parking system based on RFID reader. Our system helps

in increasing the capacity of the parking. This will be done by allowing some cars to block the

way on other cars. However and in order to guarantee the ease of de-parking any car, blocking

will be done according to the offering of each instructor. Each instructor will be provided with

a customized RFID card to help identifying him automatically by the system and hence,

highlighting the allowed places for him to park in based on his daily offering.

5.2 Future Work

This project can help the university to facilitate and help all instructors to park their cars easily

according to their daily offerings. This project can be developed in a way that we can use a QR

barcode to identify instructors using mobile phone instead of RF-tag. In addition we can do a

standalone android application to check the availability of the parking.

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 APPENDIX A:
CD CONTENTS

CD:

PRESENTATION.PPTX : PRESENTATION ABOUT THE PROJECT

FINALREPORT.DOCX : REPORT ABOUT THE PROJECT

SOURCE: FOLDER CONTAINING THE CODES USED IN THE PROJECT

LIUPARK.SQL: FILE ABOUT THE DATABASE OF THE PROJECT

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 APPENDIXB:
USER MANUAL

A.1. Login implementation:

The Login page contains a box that has two inputs username and password. The user can login

if and only if he enters the correct and existing username and password.

Figure 5-13: Login Page

A.2. Adding Instructor:

Add.php is a page that the user can add any instructor he want.

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 Figure 5-14: Add.php Page

Figure 5-15: Offerings.php Page

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Figure 5-16: Database

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 APPENDIXC:
DEPLOYMENT AND CONFIGURATION MANUAL

This part will show the steps of deploying the website device on windows operating

system.

Deploying the website will require the following:

1. Download and install XAMPP from www.apachefriends.org/index.html

2. Run XAMPP control panel.

3. Open your favorite browser.

4. Got to http://localhost/phpMyAdmin/ , and import the SQL file in the CD.

For writing, editing the script of the website we used NetBeans IDE 8.0.2, it is free

program that could be downloaded from https://netbeans.org/downloads/8.0.2

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 REFERENCES

[1] GAO RFID Inc. [online]. Available: http://gaorfid.com/gao-parking-control-system/

[2] Traffic-Tech [online]. http://www.traffic-tech.com/pdf/Parking_Management_Profile.pdf

[3] University of Rochester, Department of transportation [online]. Available:

http://www.rochester.edu/parking/avi-tags/

[4] ARDUINO EDUCATION [ONLINE]. AVAILABLE: HTTPS://WWW.ARDUINO.CC/

[5] Apache friends (2017) [online]. Available: https://www.apachefriends.org/index.html

[6] DATABASE SYSTEMS The Complete Book (Second Edition), Hector Garcia-

Molina,Jeffrey D. Ullman, and Jennifer Widom.

[7] PhpMyAdmin [online]. Available: http://www.phpmyadmin.co/

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