Nwave FAQs
Our vehicle detection system is used by municipalities, enterprises and universities’ on-campus parking operators. The use of parking spaces at these organizations facilities can be free or paid, they can use either mobile apps or digital signage for way-finding, and manage the network through our dedicated cloud back-end app or a solution of their choice. So, there are basically no limitations on the type of companies and parking assets, except for the minimum order, which is typically not less than 100 sensors per site.
Nwave’s vehicle detection system has been integrated with such popular solutions as Parkopedia, ParkHub, AppyParking, Japa, Rover.
Our solution has passed the piloting stage, we have multiple clients with thousands of sensors installed. References can be provided upon request. At the moment our minimum order quantity is 100 sensors.
Nwave’s wireless alternative is game-changing for facilities that need a less expensive, flexible, and highly accurate PGS.
Wired PGS is costly to install and maintain, has accuracy issues, is inflexible with limited facility installation locations, typically indoors only, and is not compatible with specific environmental conditions and settings.
Nwave’s Wireless PGS Overview:
- Universal PGS platform for all facility types including covered, rooftops, outdoor
- Up to 10x cost reduction vs. wired systems
- Per-space availability and total vehicle counting modes
- Robust, long-range wireless coverage with 2x-3x redundancy – even in built environments
- Modular design minimizes pre-planning, easily adapts to changes, and scales with your project
- Efficient and cost-effective visual guidance of traffic flows via DMS displays
- Clean view, no “visual clutter”, reduced AFF clearance challenges
- Extended APIs for easy integration into mobile apps and dashboards
- The Nwave wireless sensor has a replaceable battery with a 10-year life for zero to very little maintenance.
Nwave Wireless PGS can improve system reliability:
- Electric and data cable or connection failures on wired PGS systems can be difficult to locate and resolve.
- Power or data connection failure of a single row of wired sensors can lead to a loss of the total system’s accuracy.
- Unlike fully wired and semi-wireless systems that still rely on electricity to power their sensors/cameras, Nwave PGS platform ensures that any local electric failure does not impact the functionality and accuracy of the overall system.
- In case of a local electric power failure, battery-powered sensors, backed up by 2-3x redundant long-range wireless base station coverage, ensure that all parking availability data continues to flow to the cloud, ensuring continuous operation and accuracy of the Mobile App, operational Digital Signage and Analytics Dashboard.
Our company manufactures vehicle detection sensors of two types – surface-mount and flush-mount. You’ll find a description of each and a datasheet of their characteristics on our Product page.
Probably the biggest concern when developing a smart parking solution is its accuracy. We take pride in having developed a sensor that provides vehicle detection data with 99% accuracy. At the same time, no magnetometers and ultrasound sensors alone can provide it, simply because the way they detect a parking event is prone to error, and thus there is more chance they can confuse some other objects or movements with parking events or do not detect some vehicles. At Nwave we have created a low power sensor fusion coupled with advanced statistical algorithms: while each individual sensor alone may not be 99% accurate, working together they deliver superior accuracy.
The entire system is managed through Nwave’s cloud app, whose upkeep is our responsibility and is free for our customers.
Our solution basically has no limitations regarding the number of parking spots it can support. In fact, some of our clients are large cities, with as many as 7,000spots equipped with the sensors.
The sensors consume very little power and boast extremely robust mechanical design. It may take up to 10 years before batteries will need replacement.
Our solution is setting a world record in terms of short installations times: starting from quick affixing to the asphalt and further accelerated with dedicated mapping and calibration mobile app that takes a few seconds to initiate the sensor and load its coordinates in the cloud backend system.
Specific timelines depend on a particular project, but to give you a general idea of how long exactly the implementation may take, let’s take a municipality in the UK for example:
Suppose it requires 5,000 sensors and plans to use a popular payments-enabled mobile app for way-finding, as well as Nwave’s cloud back-end services. One installation crew consisting of 3 people can install 500 sensors per 8 hours working day. So the deployment of such a system would take up to 10 working days for 1 crew or one working week for two crews.
Here are the advantages of Nwave’s sensors:
- low power consumption – 10 years of battery life with 20 parking sessions day;
- 99% detection accuracy;
- quick installation (30 seconds per sensor);
- wide-range network (up to 5 km);
- thin mechanical design – just 20mm, compliant with road safety regulations.
On our Technology page, you can find a comparison of the sensor with other popular solutions.
The integration is implemented through ready-to-use open source software modules from Nwave’s SDK and RESTful cloud APIs. It comes at no extra cost.
The return on investment depends on quite a few factors: daily turnover, the cost per hour of parking, enforcement regulations in place and approach to monetizing better user experience
Some of our clients have reported that the vehicle detection system brought ROI in as fast as three months.
A simple example of how Nwave’s Wireless Parking Guidance Systems works
- Nwave wireless sensors operating in per-space mode capture occupancy in real-time with 99.9% accuracy and can optimize utilization in near-capacity garages by filling every open spot. Nwave sensors, deployed in ingress and egress lanes in vehicle counter mode provide 99%+ accurate total vehicle count, and can be combined with per-space sensors in select high-value spaces to deliver cost-effective “hybrid” solutions.
- Nwave Directional Digital Messaging Signs (DMS) provide effective traffic flow management for any built facilities. Nwave RGB LED DMS matrix displays can be programmed to display any combination of text information, shapes and images. Wireless display controllers (via WiFi, 4G, LoRaWAN) simplify installation, reduce installation cost and increase operational reliability.
- Nwave’s Mobile User App shows parking availability helping drivers to pre-plan their trip and navigate drivers to selected locations while providing real-time parking guidance updates during the trip. Parking guidance mobile App functionality can be delivered via APIs integration into your existing App or via Nwave white-labeled Navigation App.
- Nwave’s Analytics Dashboard gives you actionable analytics based on historical trends, heat maps and real-time data. Nwave’s extended APIs deliver a live, 360° view of parking peak hours, volume, turnover, duration of stay, capacity, and more in real-time – that can be easily integrated into your existing parking management platform or accessed via Nwave Analytics Dashboard.
Real-time parking availability data motivates customers to use mobile applications over cash and coins payments. On top of that Nwave’s secure driver identification technology brings cutting edge one click parking experience – customers don’t need to search and enter parking area codes, the session does start with one tap and ends automatically when the vehicle drives away.
Nwave’s wireless PGS significantly simplifies the planning and installation process, making all PGS types easy to scale, modify and grow with a facility.
Wireless adhesive-installed sensors can be re-positioned as necessary to optimize locations for sensor counters and add or remove sensors in designated spaces. As the projects evolve, wireless Nwave PGS simplifies adapting to new conditions and can easily re-program, add new or move existing DMSs and add or remove wireless sensors.
Choosing a PGS solution comes down to choosing two main domains:
- Type of Vehicle Detecting/Sensing solution
- Type of In-Facility Wayfinding solution
The selection of the vehicle detecting/sensing solution largely defines the selection of the wayfinding solution. If you gather only ingress/egress total vehicle count data for the entire facility, you cannot do any level or directional wayfinding inside of the facility, simply because you do not have the data.
In addition to the available data granularity, the layout of the facility and the budget/costs considerations will, typically, be primary drivers for selecting the optimal type and number of the hardware elements for a specific infacility wayfinding solution. As discussed earlier, we believe that a combination of entrance, level and directional DMSs provide the best value-vs-costs approach for a majority of built facilities.
Nwave can complement your existing PGS solution architecture or deliver a complete solution.
Nwave does not hold or process credit card details nor we access personal customer data. We manage parking sessions start and end time via tokenized user data leaving the financial and personal data processing to mobile payment application. Having said that our data network uses AES 256 VPN encryption and TLS/HTTPS connection.
Nwave does not have an app, and the reason for it is quite simple – there are dozens of good parking apps that have millions of users. Nwave is a global technology provider while many apps have region-specific features and local requirements. Some users might be frustrated by the fact that they need to download and install yet another app, in addition to several way-finding and parking apps they already have.
Seeing parking payments applications as valuable partners, Nwave has developed software integration modules that allow its cutting edge technology to run with any popular mobile frameworks.
Yes, we back up all parking data of our customers via managed backup service of leading private cloud infrastructure provider.
Our software suite includes a cloud analytics application for managing your vehicle detection system. The software is maintained and regularly updated by us with no need for extra spendings on the client side. Surely, our customers always have the option to discard our software in favor of their own solution. In this case, we’ll gladly assist you in integrating through our APIs. We will however strongly recommend carefully consider pros and cons. of in-house parking management system development: unless your project is about tens of thousands of sensors, then there is no economic rationale even to consider developing and maintaining a quality SaaS product.
The cloud back-end application is maintained by Nwave, and there is no need for a specialist on the client’s side to perform any kind of maintenance work.
As our network deals with electronic payments and other user data, data security is of paramount importance. Thus, we developed a system which is fully compliant with NSA regulations, uses advanced data encryption and secured server connection. You can find out more about Nwave’s network security on our Software page.
Upon the implementation of the solution, we provide our clients with training and detailed documentation on using the system. The training process doesn’t take long, the back-end and mobile app have simple and intuitive UX design. Training comes at no extra cost.