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Car Counting Systems – the BayPod System
The perfect tool for smart parking and smart cities
Car counting systems are designed to count vehicles in on-street or off-street carparks. There are two types of car counting:
- Zone based counting (the OpenSpace system) for counting available spaces within a specified area such as an off-street carpark.
- Individual bay counting (such as the BayPod system), which is designed to primarily count individual bays with a specialised sensor mounted on the ground.
Sensor based systems have been around for a number of years, but recently their popularity has declined thanks to poor performance and high failure rates. By contrast, BayPod’s sensors have been refined and redeveloped for over 10 years to produce some of the most effective results for detection accuracy, integration possibilities, design, battery life, and reliability.
Manufactured in the UK, and used extensively around the world, the BayPod system monitors each individual bay, provides guidance via signs or wayfinding app, and provides real-time reporting and online dashboards for the operator. It comes with its own management, navigation and parking inspector software, but can also be integrated into all kinds of other parking software.
BayPod can be connected to remote wayfinding signage, or used with new innovations such as the ability to count off-street carparks, and Secure Driver Identification (or SDI). This innovation uses Bluetooth to identify particular vehicles to give approval or notify an inspector if the wrong person parks in a reserved bay such as EV charging or DDA compliant.
BayPod is the perfect tool for smart parking and smart cities.
Which facilities can benefit from a BayPod car counting system?
The BayPod system is ideal for:
- Councils and large carpark operators (such as hospitals, airports, and universities)
- Monitoring and guiding vehicles for on-street car parking
- For areas of high non-compliance. Inspectors can be directed to the exact parking infringement (either via the software or a third party solution).
- For on-street payment requirements, BayPod can be integrated into parking meters and payment solutions
- For monitoring special bays, such as DDA (Disabled Accessible), EV, parent parking or Click and Collect bays
- Logistics areas
- Small setup applications, such as lane monitoring for retail drive-through venues

How do BayPod car counting systems work?
BayPod’s sensors detect vehicles as they park on top. The system then uses three unique technologies to accurately identify that a vehicle has parked, before communicating the data via the LoRaWan network to a gateway – which can be over 3 kilometres away. This extreme ranges has no impact on reliability or accuracy, and reduces the infrastructure required for the system.
The parking data is then stored and recorded on Cloud, and sent to signs or apps via API connections.

Why choose a BayPod car counting system?
- High detection accuracy – over 99.7%
- Long battery life – between 9 to 10 years based on 20 parking sessions per day
- Long range – up to 3km from gateway base station
- Fast detection time – 7 seconds average
- Designed for use in all conditions – high clearance vehicles, bad weather, with EVs etc
- Can be surface mount or flush mount
- Very thin, compact profile for surface mounted option – just 20mm thick
- Unique innovations such as Secure Driver Identification (SDI) and lane counting
- Open API can integrate with multiple different parking software solutions
- SDI: permit management for special category users
- VIP
- EVs
- DDA
- Parents etc
- Space reservations
- Contactless, ‘windows up’ payment
- Uses either an app or Bluetooth tag to transmit data to the sensors

BayPod car counting system components
- Sensors
- Gateways
- Nwave Cloud (Online management dashboard)
- Signs
- Software solutions
Benefits of BayPod car counting systems for carpark operators
When you install a BayPod car counting system in your carpark, you’ll benefit from:
- High understanding of parking behaviours and concerns via analytics
- Wayfinding for drivers, with less congestion and fewer complaints
- Lower infrastructure costs associated with setup
- The opportunity to connect parking with smart city concepts and future parking methods
- Higher compliance and turnover of vehicles
- Lowers emissions from parking – it’s estimated over 30% of vehicles in a CBD are simply looking for parking
Benefits of BayPod car counting systems for drivers
With a BayPod car counting system in your carpark, drivers will enjoy:
- The ability to find a carpark faster
- An understanding of parking prior to leaving home – allowing them to better plan their trip
- Fewer frustrations and complaints