Last Look:

Our parking lot simulation is complete! Check it out below.

Final Design

A full view of our final, much neater and redesigned parking lot:

Here is where the breadboard and Raspberry Pi are stored:

-Servos Motor (inside the box), with the gate arm attached 

-Motion Sensor at the front of the lot

-LCD Screen suspended above the entrance:

Here's how the button was placed (Parking Space 4 is our reserved spot):

Our Sensors, Breadboard, and a First Look at Our Parking Lot

Button: 

Motion Sensor:

Servos Motor:

LCD pictured below as well:

So What's Next?

Though I really wanted to continue pursuing my original idea, working with my Photon proved to be frustrating and seemingly impossible. I even tried switching Photons with others in my class for testing purposes -- but still, no luck. The device would flash Cyan for a few seconds (signaling that it was at least looking for Internet), but each time I connected it to our school's WiFi (I cycled through trying three different networks), it would quickly go back to being "Disconnected."

A few of my peers had mentioned that they were, instead, using the Raspberry Pi 3 for their projects for this reason. Seeing my situation, I considered my options and then decided to make the switch.

In fact, I was actually able to partner up with my friend and peer, Ashley, to combine her idea and mine. The overall new idea was to create a parking lot simulation that would:

1. have a motion-activated entry/exit gate and

2. send a text to let us know if the car that has entered the lot has taken our parking spot

We achieved this by using the following tools:

- a Raspberry Pi with Raspian installed

- Arduino

- the PIR sensor I mentioned from a while before

- a Servos motor
- LCD screen

- the Internet of Things (IOT)

- the Nexmo platform

- a button sensor

- One breadboard

- a few wires

Photon-NOT-So-Fun...

Unfortunately, my original project idea did not quite work out. This was due to major connectivity issues between my computer and the Photon. When the connection was successful, I was able to create an If-This-Then-That applet to send a slack notification to my own personal Slack channel each time PIR motion sensor detected activity in our student lounge:

However, after a certain point, my Photon just stopped connecting to any WiFi for any period longer than 1 minute. Despite all of my efforts to troubleshoot with the help of the Particle documentation as well as the Particle community website, this, of course, was not long enough for me to fully get the Photon to do what I wanted it to do.