Case study | Parksol guidance system in World's largest online retailer in Germany

About project

Parksol in collaboration with its partner ALPHA Standards installed an Indoor video analytic system with BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) individual space indicators at the world’s largest online retailer warehouse in Germany (Bayreuth). It is a high-tech parking garage with more than 400 parking spaces.

Situation

Retailer multi-story car park in Bayreuth was built in a record time by logistics expert Wedlich company. The car parking is dedicated to more than 400 electric delivery vans. With such an amount of employee cars, it was difficult to effectively manage the parking lot.

Employees had to drive the car assigned to them during their shift. After completing the shift, they parked the car anywhere and the next day it was difficult for other employees to find the car. They had to search the entire parking lot. For this reason, our parking system was needed to facilitate and speed up parking for employees.

Solution

While the situation in the retailer logistic center was unusual, our team with partner ALPHA Standards came up with an exceptional solution by integrating several different parking solutions from our portfolio to fulfill customer expectations.

We have installed our newest solution with video guidance cameras and BLE individual space indicators. This is a unique solution when it is necessary to indicate each parking space individually and read license plates. The indicators are controlled via Bluetooth Low Energy radio communication using mesh network configuration. Parksol addressable BLE indicators are easy to install, as they are requiring only a power supply, also very practical: can be dimmed separately, has an RGB color spectrum that can be adjusted for every indicator.

Cameras with PBOX controllers can recognize cars and their license plates. This feature allows apply filters for customers: make whitelists/blacklists, identify employees, detect cars parked for too long, reserve a parking space for a specific customer or group of customers, receive reports of individual clients or client groups, and many others.

For this project, LPR was necessary to assign specific cars in its parking location to a specific employee. The Find My Car solution was also implemented in this project, so employees could enter the license plate number and find their car faster by seeing on which floor and which parking space the car is parked.

On the rooftop entrance at the ramps counting cameras with LPR were mounted. It’s a simplified solution that can be used, where less information is required. The main function of this solution is to scan license plate numbers and count the cars.

For better car routing we’ve also installed wayfinding LED signs so that the employees and customers would be able to navigate the car to empty parking spaces.

The whole system was delivered and implemented in less than 4 months.

Additional system features

• Installation in front of the parking space (one camera up to 3 parking spaces)
• Individual parking space indicator
• The filter of customers by type (for example unwanted or employee)
• Detection of cars parked for too long (the offender is identified)
• Reservation of parking spaces (for a specific customer or group of customers)
• Parking space management for tenants
• Parking in a non-assigned place (by generating pop-up messages or email)
• Customer database, reports
• Video surveillance (in each parking space)
• Dynamic Pricing (integration via API is possible – according to parking zones)

Statistics/impact on business

• Database for the owner: parking time, occupancy with export to standard files for detailed analysis.
• Fast and clear parking: Drivers see the number of available parking spaces at the entrance and easily find the right parking spot.
• Full control of the parking: whitelist/blacklist, directing cars to a specific location, assigning a parking space and car to a specific employee.
• Environmentally friendly system: lower emissions are released into the environment.