Macchina Security, a Belgrade security and systems integrator, brought Fleximodo smart parking to Serbia for the first time in late 2024. It started with sensors and guidance signs in Novi Beograd and within weeks was running CityPortal in Zaječar and Užice as well. The project added a new capability to CityPortal: any group of sensors can now drive any display.
What problem did Macchina Security need to solve?
Novi Beograd is Belgrade's main business district, and demand for parking there regularly outstrips supply. Drivers circle looking for a space, and the operator had no live picture of occupancy. Macchina Security wanted a parking guidance system it could add to its Safe City portfolio of surveillance, access control and alarm systems, with visible signs for drivers and reliable data behind them.
What was installed?
The Novi Beograd site uses a full guidance stack:
- In-ground IoT Parking Sensor Standard units on LoRaWAN. Each sensor combines a magnetometer with radar and compensates automatically for temperature, so readings stay stable through Belgrade's cold winters and hot summers.
- 3-digit parking guidance signage in a traffic-sign frame, showing live free-space counts to approaching drivers.
- IoT-HUB for data processing, monitoring and API delivery.
In January 2025 CityPortal went live in two more cities, Zaječar in the east and Užice in the west. Each city runs as its own CityPortal instance, with separate data, branding and a municipal dashboard. Drivers get a web and mobile availability map. City staff see occupancy trends and enforcement statistics.
Why did the display logic have to change?
Once the network grew, the layout on the ground no longer matched the layout in the software. Fleximodo engineers rebuilt it remotely: 8 original car parks were retired and about 26 new ones created across two cities, with every sensor re-linked through to more than 20 displays. Some displays now show totals for three to five car parks.
CityPortal's default model counts availability per car park, and a display shows the car park it belongs to. That breaks down when one sign serves several car parks, or only part of one. Fleximodo changed the platform so that individual sensors, or any group of sensors, can be assigned to any display, regardless of car park boundaries. Typical uses:
- a sign at a shared driveway that counts only the bays nearest its entrance
- a display that shows accessible bays only
- directional signs that count only the bays reachable from one side of a street
- temporary groupings for events
What does the city get from it?
- Accurate signs. Drivers see counts that match the bays a sign actually leads to, not a car park-wide total.
- One integrator, several cities. Because each CityPortal instance is independent, Macchina Security can add cities without them affecting one another.
- Room to change. Car parks and display mappings can be reworked remotely as usage patterns shift, without touching the sensors in the ground.
For another first-in-country Balkan deployment, see Cacttus in Prishtina. For more on the platform side, see parking digitalisation.