BRAUMS PTY LTD designs and manufactures intelligent transport systems, including parking guidance, from Rydalmere in western Sydney. In May 2024 it set up a side-by-side evaluation of three Fleximodo products, with onboarding and support from Fleximodo during testing and the results viewed in the CityPortal dashboard.
At a glance
| Location | Rydalmere, New South Wales, Australia |
| Sector | Intelligent transport systems, parking guidance |
| Products | 3 × IoT Parking Sensor Standard (in-ground), 2 × IoT Parking Sensor Mini (surface-mount), 1 × IoT Permit Card |
| Connectivity | LoRaWAN for the sensors, Bluetooth Low Energy for the permit card |
| Scale | Evaluation kit, 5 sensors and 1 card |
Why test three products together?
Different car parks need different hardware, and a side-by-side test shows the trade-offs directly. The kit covers the three jobs a parking system integrator is asked to do:
- Permanent bays. The Sensor Standard goes into a core-drilled hole and sits flush with the surface. It uses a 3-axis magnetometer with radar, rated IP68 and IK10.
- Quick installs. The Sensor Mini mounts on the surface, which suits sites where drilling is not allowed or the layout may change.
- Knowing who is parked. The Permit Card sits in the vehicle and identifies it over BLE, so the system can tell a permitted car from an unauthorised one.
Running all three in one CityPortal account lets the evaluator compare detection from the two sensor types on the same screen and check how permit data links to occupied bays.
Why LoRaWAN for the sensors?
LoRaWAN lets the integrator run its own low-power radio network with gateways it controls, instead of depending on a mobile operator. For a test with a handful of sensors, one gateway is usually enough to cover the test area. Fleximodo sensors are also available on NB-IoT, so the choice can differ between the trial and a later project.
The same evaluation approach is available to other integrators as the Fleximodo demo kit. Another Australian parking systems company, CDS Worldwide in Melbourne, evaluated an in-ground sensor combining NB-IoT and UWB: see the Melbourne case study. A similar multi-product trial in the Netherlands is described in Maastricht.