Multi- Level Car Park System Project

Career Episode 1

CE 1.1 INTRODUCTION

During my engineering degree, I worked on a project called “Multi- Level Car Park System” in my 6^th semester. So, my first career episode describes that project. I did my Bachelor’s Degree in Electronics & Communication from Surya School of Engineering & Technology affiliated to Punjab Technical University. I completed my engineering in 2013. This project was completed in six months and under the leadership of Prof. Neha Batra Sharma who was a microcontroller lecturer.

CE 1.2 BACKGROUND

In this century, every person is trying to find ways in which work can be done easily and fast. There are lot of developments that have been done that are based on automation. The project  makes use of this concept which is cooperative for everyone. In this project, I am trying to solve the traditional parking system which is noisy, trouble for users and has risk of accidents. For these problems and to reduce human efforts I have introduced an automation based multi-level parking system which utilizes minimum space possible and many cars can be parked making it time saving and risk free. Parking will be done in that same amount of place grated by the government but many cars can be accommodated. Here the driver of the car will just park the car at the entry point and then rest of the parking work will be done by this new system itself without the help of any valet driver.

CE 1.3

The issue in every industry, building or office is of parking. Lot of space is needed to park a car. In traditional parking systems, man power i.e. drivers are required and as number of cars are increasing drastically in the market it creates a hazard for each driver who is on the road. If appropriate car parking is done then more cars can be parked. Also, there should be proper space that is need to be maintained between two car lens so a person taking his car out doesn’t face any problem along with no wastage of space is done.

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The aim and objective behind this project is to lessen human efforts to park a car. In this system, I have made use of automation which is done by Arduino controller. This system will help to minimize the car parking area especially in areas where there is less space for parking. The automated car parking system will enable vehicles to be parked at each floor by floor and in limited amount of space, many vehicles can be parked. It is the modernized system of parking cars.

CE 1.4

I had made a project strategy to plan the work I needed to perform along with the duration it would require by considering the level of complications and important areas of work. I started by putting the first thing in my plan as, to discuss the idea about project and do some research which was followed by designing of the model and studying Arduino controller. Which further involved implementation of the model and studying various programming techniques useful for this controller. It followed by final interfacing of components like servo motor, keypad etc. to complete the hardware and software part. I had also performed test run and troubleshoot on the system and made a detail project report. At every step, I kept my internal project guide involved and updated with my progress.

CE 1.5 PERSONAL ENGINEERING ACTIVITY

After finalizing the title for my project, I started doing reviews on current scenarios in car parking and noted down all the difficulties and started to find solutions on it. There after I started to discover strategies on how to follow and go ahead with this solution. I divided the project implantation process in 2 portions: cark parking process and car taking process. And I developed a block diagram for the hardware which can be seen below.

CE 1.6

Automation is basically the use of control system that will reduce the work or effort done by human in performing any task of goods and services. It basically eases it. in space of industrialization, automation is a step beyond mechanization. Mechanization mostly provides human with machinery that will operate to assist them with any physical or muscular exertion requirement. Whereas automation significantly decreases the need for human physical and mental requirements. It plays an important role in the world now.

Generally automated parking is a method of parking and retrieving cars automatically by using a system of pallets and lifts. It is a time saving and space saving method and it can be used for underground or leveled parking system. It enhances the safety and comfort of driver in constrained environment that requires experience and attention to steer the car.

CE 1.7

I made use of following hardware components after performing studies on them.

1. Arduino controller – is a tool used so that the system can sense and control the number of inputs and outputs. It is simply a microcontroller board on which programs can be coded.

2. L293 Motor drive IC – a monolithic integrated high voltage device which is used as heat sink and to drive inductive loads and switching power transistors.

3. DC Motor – used bidirectional DC motor that will rotate in both direction and generate torque directly and speed of 10rpm.

4. Servo motor – used for precision positioning and are equipped with servo mechanism to control angular positions.

5. Keypad – use of keypad is done to get inputs from the user to the system. User inputs car details and will input the parking spot for that car where it can be parked.

CE 1.8

The internal circuitry working of this system can be described as when the power supply is given to the controller, it asks for input from the user. User enters the input via keyboard which then goes to Arduino microcontroller. Motor drive IC which is connected to the main motor receives data from the controller that is given by the user.  The controller will work as directed by the input and pass it to device IC accordingly and thus the motor will rotate. Thus, after car gets parked in the desired area, the key is pressed for that slot and it sends a 0 signal to the controller along with other necessary information of the car. The same procedure repeats for various other cars.

The software part was coded based on C/C++ programming language. Though it seemed to be a simple code, it took lot of efforts in completion. I divided the whole code into parts and tried to code each segment separately and check its functionality and then combine it together so that it acts as one and performs in the desired fashion. I also took help from experts from the field of coding to achieve the desired result in my project.

CE 1.9

The parking of the car process of my project:

The limit switch tracks for any empty available parking spots so when the user inputs the details for parking, the loop continues to flow until it finds a slot for parking. When a slot is found, it will ask the user to input details and select from available slot. This input goes to the controller. The controller triggers the appropriate pin to give a vertical movement to the lift until floor detection key is pressed. After reaching the desired floor, the second motor is rotated to get to the desired area of parking. The servo motor rotates the lift outside and vertical motor moves downwards till it is parked in the slot. Once car is parked, the lift positions itself to the original position at the entry level.

Picking the car from Parking process:

When a user wants to take out his car from parking, it enters the details and the loop flows until he enters the slot number of the car parked. The slot number acts as an input for the controller and the same procedure is repeated until the car is taken out. The lift then levels itself to the entry level.

CE 1.10

While performing this project, there were many hurdles in between. The first hurdle was construction of its hardware, as it requires lots of component and it structure was very heavy and bulky. And the controller was a new one for me so it took a while to understand its details and the way it functions. The other problem was with the software as I was not so proficient in making such complex codes. I took help from my seniors and project guide and they helped me overcome this hurdle.

CE 1.11 SUMMARY

Based on practical and theoretical knowledge in my field of electronics I prepared a working model that performs the required functionality. Various possible different solutions and options were taken into consideration and had been studied. And thus, after technical comparative study based on its merit and demerits I performed this system. The whole control of the system is done on Arduino controller board and it’s the main driving unit of the system. There is a lot of scope for expansion to this system by adding sensors and LCD display showing all parking spots and details.

Overall this project helped me learn new things and it being my first every project in my own field of study, was a new experience. It helped me grow a lot in technical terms as well as at personal level.