Automates paying for off-street car parking managed by PayByPhone with a couple of ESP32 devices.
PayByPhone apparently makes paying for parking easier but let's be real, it doesn't.
I recently bought a car whilst living a new build development that doesn't provide my specific block with permits for the dedicated underground car park, or the private road owned by the development. The only realistic solution was to accept that I'll have to pay an almost daily fee to park my car on the council owned road on the other side of my block. It's turns out cheaper than permits for spaces further away and I can see my car outside my balcony so it's not the worst thing in the world.
Only problem is, having to wake up at 8am everyday to tap a few buttons on an app is too much work for my modern way of living! PayByPhone doesn't have an option for automatic payments for my specific street. Simply setting a cron job to pay for me wouldn't work because I'm not always home within the chargeable times and that would just be a waste of money. So here is my over engineered solution to track when my car is parked on that street outside my house so I only pay for parking when I need to, automatically.
The system is comprised of two ESP32 devices:
- Server: Connected to home network via WiFi. Responsible for deciding when to pay for parking.
- Beacon: Sits inside of the car and connects to the server when it's nearby.