Project Parking Bulgaria, a Sofia parking operator and integrator, brought Fleximodo to Bulgaria in 2025. Instead of a basic sensor trial, it started with a pilot that could handle reserved bays: sensors to detect occupancy, Permit Cards to identify vehicles, and two kinds of guidance display, one counting free spaces and one showing the licence plate of the driver who booked. Within a few weeks the system had UWB precision, the operator's own branding and a Bulgarian-language interface.
How the project developed
May 2025: a reservation-ready pilot
The first installation in Sofia combined:
- IoT Parking Sensor Standard units on NB-IoT, flush-mounted in each bay
- Bluetooth Permit Cards carrying the operator's branding, to link vehicles to bookings
- 2-digit guidance displays showing the number of free spaces
- 8-digit guidance displays configured to show licence plates, so a driver with a reservation sees their own plate on arrival
- CityPortal as the back end for occupancy, bookings and plate dispatch
Both display types are solar-powered flip-dot units on NB-IoT, so the site needed no power or data cabling to the signs. First-come drivers and drivers with bookings are served by the same system.
June 2025: UWB, branding and Bulgarian
Bluetooth identifies a card within a few metres. That is enough for permit checks, but a reservation system needs to know which exact bay a vehicle is in. Project Parking Bulgaria added 25 sensors and 25 Permit Cards with Ultra-Wideband (UWB) alongside Bluetooth. UWB gives centimetre-level positioning, so the system can tell which reserved bay a card is in, even when cars park close together, and spot a vehicle without a booking in a reserved bay.
The same phase made the product the operator's own:
- laser-etched branding on the sensor bodies and branded stickers on the cards
- a white-label CityPortal under Project Parking Bulgaria's brand
- a full Bulgarian (Cyrillic) interface. The operator supplied the translation and Fleximodo handled integration, Cyrillic rendering and layout checks.
August 2025: signage delivered for commissioning
The guidance signs were delivered separately from the sensors. That let the team install and commission bays first, then mount the displays once positions on site were fixed.
Lessons for similar sites
- Decide early if you need reservations. Reserved bays need more than a counter: vehicle identification, a booking back end and a way to tell the arriving driver their bay is held. Specifying all of it from the start avoided a second design round.
- Use UWB where bay-level identity matters. Bluetooth suits permit zones. UWB is the better fit where a specific vehicle must be matched to a specific bay.
- Localise before you sell. Drivers and local buyers expect their own language and script. A native-speaker translation with vendor-side integration was the quickest route to a local product.
- Stage the hardware. Delivering signage after the sensors are in keeps storage on site low and follows the real installation sequence.
For the platform side of white-labelling and localisation, see parking digitalisation. For another first-in-country guidance project, see Macchina Security in Serbia.
Takeaway: a reservation-ready pilot with UWB, local branding and a Bulgarian interface gave Sofia a finished local product, not a trial.