Smart Parking launches new SmartSpot Gateway solution

Smart Parking presents its newly designed SmartSpot IoT Gateway, with new and improved features adapted to meet the needs of smart city operators - making it today’s most flexible gateway in the smart parking market.

In addition to providing the information connection between a comprehensive suite of smart vehicle parking sensors, digital displays, indicators and the SmartCloud services platform, SmartSpots also act as a common IoT gateway platform which is flexible enough to accommodate a wide range of connectivity requirements and protocols within smart city environments ranging from common Ethernet and WiFi compatible devices to standards such as ZigBee/802.15.4, LoRaWAN, 3G, 4G, and the upcoming 5G.

“The SmartSpot Gateway is unique amongst IoT gateways and within the smart parking markets as it delivers smart cities with the simple practicality of a single ‘street furniture’ gateway installed throughout the city that can meet the high demands of accurate, enforceable parking information while simultaneously accommodating an open range of additional services such as public broadband, safety video surveillance, air quality, lighting control, and much more.” says John Heard, Smart Parking CTO.

“Secure communications over Ethernet, WiFi, 3G, and 4G can be used to network the real-time information with the SmartCloud service platform, using various low power radio mechanisms the SmartSpots send and receive data from sensors. Over-The-Air (OTA) provisioning, configuration management and firmware updates also mean that these devices are kept up to date with the latest software upgrades.”

One SmartSpot gateway can serve hundreds of sensors within a city environment. This dramatically lowers the number of gateways required, which in turn lowers the overall cost of ownership.

Councils across the globe are already beginning to consider the benefits of installing SmartSpot Gateways, with Wellington City Council deploying a total of 84 SmartSpots to create a redundant SmartZone coverage of the total Wellington City CBD, and Cardiff City Council are about to commence the deployment of a similar number of SmartSpots in what will be Europe’s first city wide roll-out of parking bay sensor technology.

SmartCloud

SmartSpots are centrally managed and operated from the SmartCloud service platform. The SmartCloud services platform provides a comprehensive and flexible suite of service solutions which support diverse and advanced parking service requirements around the world today at all levels of scale.

SmartCloud platform is delivered on top of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud infrastructure which establishes a fully flexible global regionalization, unlimited high availability capacity, and the most competitive resource economics. The AWS based cloud hosting platform guarantees that the world’s leading system operations expertise and datacentre capabilities underpin the SmartCloud functionality and infrastructure for each one of our customers and every piece of information.

Commenting on the next generation of Smart Parking technology, Smart Parking’s CEO Paul Gillespie said that the company is building on a proven track record of delivering innovative solutions. “Unlike some alternative providers of bay sensor technology, Smart Parking continues to push the boundaries by building on existing solutions to deliver what is now being called the Internet of Things (IoT) and the integration of many other types of smart city services.”

“It is Smart Parking’s promise to exceed customer expectations in being able to deliver smart parking capabilities which create new levels of service.”

About Smart Parking

Formed in 1993, Smart Parking is now one of the largest and fastest-growing bay sensor technology companies in the world. Smart Parking specialises in some of the most technically innovative real-world solutions available within the market and continually leads the way in the development and application of these technologies, under the 'Smart' systems brand. They develop industry-leading technology and provide their clients with the very best parking management solutions.