Q-Free’s Smart parking sensor ParQSense helps car drivers quickly find open parking spots
A lot of traffic on the roads in an urban area is generated from people looking for parking spots. Thus drivers have to spend a whopping sum for garage fees, parking tickets, and fuel burned while searching for a spot. With a vision to remove excess traffic off the roads, intelligent transportation system provider Q-Free and Silicon Labs have collaborated on a new outdoor parking IoT sensor solution that makes it faster and easier for automotive drivers in urban areas to locate open parking spots.
The companies have worked together to create Q-Free’s ParQSense Smart Parking Sensor, which uses the Silicon Labs’ Wonder Gecko wireless microcontroller (MCU) for control and Sub-GHz connectivity.
Smart parking solution combines high-accuracy with low-power consumption
The product claims to solve the primary design obstacle by offering a combination of high accuracy with extremely low power consumption.
The Q-Free ParQSense solution uses dual radar and magnetic field technology to sense with 99+ percent accuracy whether a vehicle is present in a parking space. The application transmits data to centralized base stations over ultra-long distances using narrowband sub-GHz wireless connectivity, the company said.
This is in contrast to many existing outdoor parking sensors on the market that had accuracy limitations and struggled with wireless capabilities and interference from cellular networks commonly associated with urban environments, the company noted.
“The Q-Free ParQSense Smart Parking Sensor is a great example of how IoT ingenuity can improve our lives and the overall urban experience,” said Dennis Natale, Vice President and General Manager of IoT Products at Silicon Labs. “As the demand for smart city solutions accelerates, IoT innovators like Q-Free are choosing Silicon Labs’ low-power wireless connectivity technologies for their solutions.”
“To develop an IoT sensor solution for outdoor parking that would succeed in today’s market, we had to deliver a combination of low-power, long-range wireless connectivity and high performance,” said Brage Blekken, a project manager in Q-Free’s R&D department. “Silicon Labs helped us overcome this challenge by providing best-in-class wireless technology capable of transmitting data over long distances in the sub-GHz band. The EZR32WG Wonder Gecko wireless MCU was the perfect fit for our application needs.”
Availability
The Q-Free solution was deployed as a pilot this year in the EU (UK, Netherlands, Sweden and Norway) and North America, and will be released for commercial use on Sept. 17, 2018.
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