Smart Car Park IoT Walkthrough
Step-by-step guide to experiencing real-time car park occupancy monitoring with IoT sensors
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10 minutes to see real-time car park occupancy data from IoT sensors
This walkthrough guides you through viewing a real-time dashboard powered by IoT sensors. Perfect for facilities managers, smart city teams, and anyone evaluating IoT for car park management or broader smart city initiatives.
What you'll do
In this 10-minute walkthrough, you'll:
- Access the CloudWatch dashboard - Find your deployed IoT monitoring dashboard (2 minutes)
- View real-time occupancy data - See live metrics across 3 car park zones (2 minutes)
- Understand the IoT data flow - Learn how sensor readings become dashboard insights (3 minutes)
- Explore occupancy trends & ROI - Analyze patterns and calculate business value (3 minutes)
Before you start
Deploy the Smart Car Park scenario if you haven't already. Deployment takes 5-7 minutes.
IoT sensor data check
Pre-loaded for immediate exploration
✓ Free - no AWS charges
About this sample data
What is this data?
Simulated IoT sensor readings from car park occupancy sensors
What does it represent?
Typical UK council car park monitoring data
Important:
This is fictional data with no connection to any real council system
How was it generated?
Generated from IoT sensor data patterns
What you'll learn
For facilities managers
- How IoT sensors detect vehicle presence
- Real-time visibility across all car park zones
- Automated alerts for high occupancy or sensor failures
- Historical patterns showing peak vs off-peak usage
- Elimination of manual space counting
For smart city teams
- Revenue increase from improved occupancy (60% to 85%)
- Operational cost savings (£9.75K/year eliminated)
- ROI calculation and payback period
- Scalability to other IoT use cases
- Foundation for smart city strategy
The car park you'll monitor
We've simulated a typical council multi-storey car park with IoT sensors:
How IoT sensors work
Each parking space has an ultrasonic sensor that detects vehicle presence:
Sensor detects vehicle
Ultrasonic distance measurement determines if space is occupied
Data sent to AWS IoT Core
Sensor publishes MQTT message with occupancy state
Lambda processes reading
Validates data, stores history, publishes metrics
CloudWatch displays dashboard
Real-time metrics visible in your browser
AWS services used: IoT Core (message broker), Lambda (processing), DynamoDB (history storage), CloudWatch (visualization + alerts)
The wow moment
When you open the CloudWatch dashboard, you'll see:
- Live occupancy updates - Dashboard refreshes every 10 seconds automatically
- Multi-zone visibility - See all 3 floors at once (impossible with manual counting)
- 24-hour historical trends - Identify peak hours and quiet periods instantly
- Automated alerts - Get notified when occupancy reaches thresholds
All powered by 50 IoT sensors collecting data every 2 minutes. Zero manual effort. No clipboards. No spreadsheets. No outdated information.
Think about your council car parks
How many car parks does your council manage?
Consider the impact per 50-space car park:
- Manual counting eliminated
- Save £9,750/year in labor costs
- Occupancy improvement
- From 60% to 85% = £16,250 additional revenue/year
- Total annual benefit
- £26,000 per car park
- AWS annual cost
- £145/year (IoT Core, Lambda, DynamoDB, CloudWatch)
- Net ROI
- 178:1 return - payback in 2 days
Committee language: "IoT sensors transform car park management from reactive to proactive. Real-time occupancy data increases revenue by £16K annually while eliminating manual counting costs of £9.75K. Total annual benefit of £26K against AWS costs of £145 delivers a 178:1 return on investment, with payback achieved in just 2 days."
Takes approximately 10 minutes