The UN estimates that by 2030, urban areas will house 60% of the global
population, while the number of cities with 1 to 5 million inhabitants
will grow from 467 in 2018 to 597. As a result, cities will experience
challenges related to liveability, energy efficiency and mobility. Smart city solutions can help address some of these issues. These solutions can govern everything from air quality, public safety, traffic flows and parking to electricity and water, helping make cities more workable and sustainable.

Solar-powered smart parking meters a smart solution

Digitalising city infrastructure requires long-term planning and budgeting. Construction is also very costly and time-consuming. Smart city providers need to offer profitable and feasible solutions to overcome these challenges. The smart city solution provider in Taiwan has been working with Advantech on the development of solar-powered smart parking meters that are more energy efficient and can be deployed faster.

Photo courtesy of Advantech

“At the time, there was no high computing performance parking meter with low power consumption on the market. With Advantech’s support, our solution not only met the performance requirements but also allowed for the battery to be changed every two months,” the solution provider said.

One-stop design-in service saved effort in hardware-software integration

Smart parking meters require rugged designs with sufficient computing performance to withstand outside temperatures. They require stable operation to detect the occupancy of parking spaces. Some parking meters – especially those that are solar-powered – can only support devices with low energy consumption.

The Advantech ROM-5721 SMARC 2.1 Computer-on-Module, powered by NXP i.MX 8M  SOC, overcomes these challenges. The ROM-5721’s small footprint fits the compact housing design of the parking meter. Its heterogeneous processing architecture, including up to 4 x Arm® Cortex®-A53 cores and one Cortex-M4 processor, combined with Advantech’s real-time operating system (RTOS) design-in service, allows the parking meter to utilise power management and computing resources efficiently. This means the parking meter can switch between deep sleep, sleep and operating modes swiftly, and run multiple peripheral and software applications at the same time. Normally, the parking meter’s CPU falls into deep sleep mode, leaving its Cortex-M4 processor to monitor the millimetre wave radar. Only when the radar detects movement does the CPU wake up to process main functions such as contactless payments and licence plate recognition. Instead of normal LCD or LED displays, this meter uses an e-paper display to save more power.

Photo courtesy of Advantech

Advantech helps speed up the project

Advantech’s flexible modular software and hardware designs, such as ready-to-use embedded Linux (yocto) for Cortex-A53, enabled the solution provider to focus on the development of its own applications and accelerated the overall project schedule. Advantech’s AIM-Linux includes an embedded Linux Board Support Package (BSP) based on the long-term support (LTS) version and peripheral drivers for diverse software requirements.

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Article courtesy of Advantech