If you are a stranger with a car in a crowded city or even if you know the area well, a frustrating part of being in the most popular downtown places can be finding a parking spot. At Sensors Expo 2017, Raffaelli Riva, an application engineer from STMicroelectronics, demonstrated how sensors and wireless communications are a critical part of relieving this frustration. Using the company’s S2-LP with SigFox, a sub 1-MHz radio device and BlueNRG-1, a low-energy radio transceiver, a parking lot detection and communication system can provide information regarding available parking location to avoid wasting time and fuel driving around with the hope of finding an empty space. In a smart city, by sensing the absence or presence of a vehicle in a designated parking spot, the communications system updates this information so drivers can easily find an available spot. Sigfox, provides Internet of things (IoT) connectivity with a global Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) network. ST’s ultra low-power chipset communicates parking information captured from a wide area to provide information to interested parties.
Key features of ST’s support package for the chips includes:
- BLE-Sub1GHz Dual Radio Navigator PC application
- BlueNRG-1 Bluetooth Low Energy stack binary library and APIs, events callbacks interface
- BLE-Sub1GHz Dual Radio demonstrations applications (source and header files) supporting BlueNRG-1 and S2-LP kits
- BlueNRG-1 CMSIS files
- BlueNRG-1 peripherals drivers and related examples
- ST-SigFox Library for ARM® Cortex® -M0 and adaptation layer for the BlueNRG-1
- S2-LP Library and adaptation layer for BlueNRG-1
