Campus Parking Availability System
For my senior capstone at the University of Tennessee, I led a team of 6 students to build a real-time parking occupancy system that solved a real campus problem—and actually got deployed.
What I Learned About Leadership: Leading this project meant coordinating hardware and software work streams, managing timelines, and making trade-offs when reality didn’t match our plans. We had to figure out physical installation in an active parking garage, negotiate with university facility management, work around power and network constraints, all to deliver something that actually worked.
What We Built:
- Ultrasonic sensors to detect vehicles entering and leaving
- Embedded controllers to process sensor data in real-time
- Live web dashboard showing current occupancy
- Complete system documentation and faculty presentation
This project taught me that real-world deployments are messy. You have to account for environmental factors, user behavior, and operational constraints that never show up in the textbook. Full technical details are in the links below.
