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Montreal Parking Meters Run Linux
jbecherv writes "According to LinuxDevices.com, new-fangled Montreal parking meters run embedded Linux (Google Cache). The City of Montreal is planning to roll out 500 to 800 wireless, solar-powered parking payment stations based on embedded Linux. There is even a
device profile
(Google Cache) that show some details about the meters... These meters run kernel 2.4.19 on a 206MHz StrongARM SA-1110. Each system has 64MB of RAM, boots from a CF device, and is networked wirelessly via GPRS."
But that seems like a lot of RAM. Is it?
I can't recall where it was, but some other city tried using solar powered parking meters. They never worked due to insufficient light.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Or does a 206 MHz processor with 64 MB of ram seem like DRASTIC OVERKILL for a parking meter?
Seriously, what's the deal?
Poor parking meters now they'll be the target of drunk geeks as well as drunk frat boys.
"If you're flammable and have legs, you are never blocking a fire exit." - Mitch Hedberg
Lemme get this straight..
Solar powered, in MONTREAL???
Guess the StrongARM takes less power than I thought...
http://www.masturbateforpeace.com/
Software should be free as in Free Parking.
My metamoderation cancels your moderation
Centralized control enables city officials to adjust rates on the fly, for example raising the rates during sporting events, concerts, or other times of high parking demand.
as if meters aren't expensive enough... We really needed someone to come up w/the bright idea to allow dynamic changes to parking meters.
The last parking meter I parked at was 25 cents for 10 minutes. That's just nuts. This will just enable them to have meters that take credit cards forcing even higher rates.
Want a way to stop people from coming downtown? Raise the rates on the meters even higher.
Before people broke meters so they wont have to pay, now their gonna break 'em and take 'em home so they can use them!
i'm not saying embedded windows is safer, i'm just wondering if someone could easily hack this system, it would be interesting if someone got free parking in the city
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of those! Hours of parking time could be finished in minutes!
"If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living."
- Seneca
Cale Systems and 8D Technologies deliver one of the world's most advanced parking systems - wireless electronic payment and management - to be deployed in a large North-American city
So what is going to happen when someone comes along with a thick black Sharpie Permanent Marker and mark the solar panel all black?
...but does it run Windows?
You'll know they switched when you come to Montreal and the streets are bathed in an eerie blue light.
Parking meters are simple and reliable. Nothing like taking something that just works and replacing it with something else that is infinitely more complex, break-prone and expensive. Besides which, people will never use these things successfully. "Put coin in slot next to car" is as smart as people are. Seriously. People are going to pay for the wrong parking spots, pay too much money, and so on. Bad idea.
I wonder how many sunny days and how many actual sunlight hours those park meters get in Montreal. Specially in winter. How big are the panels? Mars probe technology is being deployed?
Detroit is rolling out high tech ones too
Evolution or ID?
so like... how long till theres an exploits to get free parking?
it would be cool if you could pay for your car online if a meeting runs long or something. other than that, this seems like more of a waste of money and raises the risk of them getting stolen. stealing the old fashioned ones is cool, but stealing a bunch of portable solar computers would be bad-ass!
few hunderds of spare 200 MHz ? I wonder if their administrator will resist the tempation of installing disturbed computing client (like seti@home, or distcc >;-)
#
#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
#
I have a parking meeter "obtained" from the storage room of my local municipality about 20 years ago. They had been out of service for 10 years, and installed 10 before that. Old enough that you could buy 8 minuites for a penny, anyway. Now, when I was playing with it as a kid- it still worked. Heavy as hell, was death on toes, but it still worked. In 40 years, where will these be? How will they be safely disposed of?
Just like touch screen voting, this seems like a "because we can" application of technology. Sometimes there's no reason to replace what works. The old steel parking meters are quite literally bulletproof. I simply cant imagine any reason that makes networked meters any better.
Of course, when I moved to DC I sold my car and bought a bus pass, so what do I know?
No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!
I remember way back in the day, a full set of support for PDA hardware and software was available. Digital was licensing the technology in order to develop the StrongARM (1995/6 for the 200Mhz version IIRC - got a Palm on my desk that's powered by one of those). ARM didn't have quite the same profile in embedded systems markets in those days, but they were certainly aware of the potential of their CPU: the ARM6 was the first CPU they specifically designed for embedded applications.
Interesting that it's now powering digital parking meters - running Linux no less!
Isn't this just a bit much for a parking meter? The more simple a solution, usually the better. There would be a reduction in moving parts with using the new devices, but I don't think that and the network idea are enough to justify this. The fact is the more complex things are made, the better chance of something going wrong. Even in the article they mention having to fix a bug. What will happen when another bug starts shorting people ticket time and they have to deal with a mob of angry car owners? Solar power is good and all, but has it ever been used successfully on such a project? It looks like politics took control and pushed special interests ahead of common sense. At least they're not running Windows PM special ultra extreme .NET software.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
The Device Profile states, "The stations run a Linux distribution that 8D developed in-house." Where is the source code? I searched:
8D
http://www.8d.com/
But couldn't find anything. How can we efficiently build on 8D's work to build a better, competitive parking meter without the code?
Only Women Bleed (Sex, Sharia remix)
Excerpt from SCO's reactionary press release: "Anyone who parks at one of these meters is in effect using Linux, and therefore owes SCO $699 + 25 cents per half hour."
-Darl
Somebody e-mail me the free parking exploit
Normally any conversation taking place about technical advancements of parking meters is usually left to the pub with the intoxicated...
But alas here I am... sober.
What I wonder is, being able to use your cell phone to pay for your parking fare on such a possible UBER METER, would it also SMS or phone you to nag you that your time is almost up and it's time to "feed" the meter?
Anyone that remembers pay toilets is surely dieing for info on state-of-the-art bleeding edge toilet tech. Anyone have any info on computerized pay toilets?
You had a 40 year old parking meter that would let you add more time to it from any other parking meter in the city (rather than having to run across the block/campus/city to that particular parking meter)? And the city could dynamically adjust the rates for a given area of the city in order to curtail congestion patterns??
That's incredible!
Sounds like these meters will automatically tell the parking officer when your time is up. They could even combine them with pavement sensors and photo recognition (or RFID!) in the future to automatically ticket you.
Let's go warparking!
That would be nice for Canadiens games. But if you want me to attend an Expos game, you'll have to set the parking meter to pay me.
This sig intentionally left blank.
I would like them to come up with a device (or a GPS plugin or whatever) which would show me the empty parking spots available in a radius around my current location.
I would think most people who work/commute downtown and don't want to pay monthly parking fees would be willing to shell out big bucks for such a feature.
Certainly beats crawling around the roadside for hours trying to find a parking spot.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
They don't want you paying the meter like you're supposed to. If you do, they only get 25 cents per 15 minutes or whatever (which would be a maximum of, what $24 per day? Even if they are in force 24 hours, which few are?). If you fail to pay, and the meter-maid spots it, they get $25 (or similar). They get more (possibly far more) for one ticket than for a whole day of good little parkers.
This is why there's often a short maximum total parking time limit -- gotta have turnover. The more people park, the more tickets have a chance of getting written.
This is also why you see news stories every now and then about people who go around feeding other people's meters getting arrested or otherwise harrased. These Helpy Helpertons cut down on revenue.
Municipalities don't want obedience, they want money. The parking-meter scam is but one method.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
You and your friends can park for free!*
*Certain conditions apply, results vary on battery power, may not be claimed in the United States of America.
In greater Vancouver, we have dodgey characters that drive around with hacksaws, decapitating the meters for the change inside. A thousand dollar parking meter gets destroyed for $40 in change.
In Montreal, it will be geeks with hacksaws. Rather than being tossed into a lake, the parking meters will show up in a home-built robot.
where do you think it holds all the quarters?
.
There was an article in the Seattle PI today about Seattle's plans to do this exact same change:
The article also talks about how Portland made the same switchover, and the successes they had:
Neil
Seems to me they had parking metres before the days of Linux and IC's. Why the hell would you need an operating system on a parking meter. Sounds like a big waste of money to me. I think the mechanical ones would be a lot easier to maintain. People just have to make everything so damn complicated nowadays.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Just try getting those things to play sound. Even parking meters that ran Windows 95 could find the sound card with no problem.
you mean like near the sex shops?
Here are some more fun hacking ideas:
-Program the meters to play "We're into Money" in beep tones whenever somebody swipes their card.
-Program the meter to prompt the user to find out what class of car they drive. If it's a SUV, the meter will refuse to let them park because the gargantuan heap blocks out the sun the meter needs to run.
-Program the meter to randomly scramble PIN numbers that users input.
-Program the meter to randomly pop up Microsoft error messages. We wouldn't want parking meters to give Linux a bad name now would we?
Solar powered is great, but what happens when those Montreal winters come blasting?
Most batteries don't fare well as the temperature plummets towards -40, either.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
That's a MINOR benefit. How about all the other stuff that sells the management on deploying this technology like:
- expired meters signal the agent to stop by and ticket. No more walking around checking every meter.... Super efficient way to raise revenues
- weekly/monthly stats of spaces highlight the areas of highest overtime parking incidence. Again, super efficient means of tagging and collecting revenue.
- stats reveal where meter feeding is commonplace, actual park time, and help set time limits based on actual usage. Again, super efficient means to more revenue.
- stats indicate effectiveness of foot agents in monitoring meter use and citing violators.
- "Average Time past exiration before ticketed" and "number of overtime cars who got away before being ticketed" come to mind as new performance metrics for metermaids of the 21st century.
and on and on and on..... Remember people, it's all about money.
Are users being given the option of download the source code?
The GPL requires disclosure of source code upon request of people who have acquired the binaries. Most Montreal residents don't have the binaries, so they aren't entitled to the source code. If the city itself bought the program (and the parking meters aren't being run through a proxy company such as the parking meter manufacturers), then the city is entitled to source code.
The previous posts are right on the money as far as the potential usefulness, and cost savings of these meters.
/. hacker community.
1 . I could see it as very useful especially if they program these up to send SMS messages to your cell phone when time is about to expire and allow you to recharge the meters via your cell phone.
2. Turn them into potential advertising machines. The LCD screens can run mini commercials on a small screen and generate more money for the city. I can also see this as a perk, you get free parking for watching the ads and responding to the questions just to ensure you're really watching the ads.
3. Have them accept smart cards or credit cards only. This would eliminate the need to hire people to manually go to each meter and collect money out of them.
4. Set them up to take a picture of your plates when your meter runs out they could just send you a parking ticket to the address of the vehicle's owner. This could save money by eliminating parking enforcement officers and making easy money for all those expired meters that enforcement officers never catch.
The cool possibilities are endless. I just hope that they figure out a way to keep them secure from people like me and the rest of the
Seriously, that'd be okay with me!
:P
*grin*
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
Did you know that Quebec is the only place in North America where an unpaid parking ticket will cause an arrest warrant to be issued?
Pretty ridiculous if you ask me..
I am a Nigerian national who has approximately:
500 to 800 wireless, solar-powered PDA's based on embedded Linux. These PDAs run kernel 2.4.19 on a 206MHz StrongARM SA-1110. Each system has 64MB of RAM. (Display not included)
Saddly, they were imprisoned in metal cases by my dastardly cousin who sold them to the City of Montreal.
If you would send me $1100 for a sledge hammer and airplane ticket to free my property, I would gladly repay you with half of my stolen goods.
Please do not inform the authorities as they will most certainly move my property to another city.
Please e-mail me at scams-r-us@upyours.com
With its cache.
*ba dum bum*
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Hi,
I work for Precise Parklink, the provider for the Toronto Parking Authority and many municipalities in Ontario and Western Canada. Our machines are solely based on a EPROM with very little data stored. Why would anyone need 64MB? Our machines also operate on GPRS GSM 'and' Mobitex, solar power, wireless, etc. There's no kernel, no flash card, and works great. One thing that would really impress me is if these Linux machines could accept debit, and most of all, if someone is able to hack it. Also, storing credit card data on a compactflash card garentees the data always exists, which is a bad thing if someone were to tamper with the machine. With our machines, the transactions aren't stored on the EPROM, but instead on RAM. If the machine is turned off or reset, the cc data is lost and the parker is safe from someone stealing their credit card number. Bottom line, the more advanced technology gets for parking meters, the more susceptable to fraud, bugs, and security issues.
Now, all you need to do is to get root access and never pay for parking again! I bet there would be a good buck in making a keychain which wirelessly adds time to your parking meter.
Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what's right. --Isaac Asimov
Two words. War parking.
*blinking cursor*
metermaids ...
Most pro and semi-pro digital cameras use CF. The primary reason for this is the very large amount of storage they can get in CF form factor, especially with a microdrive.
:-)
The media you mentioned is strictly for the common folk (not meant as a slure: all my cameras use SD
TW
Here's why:
There's one meter per block, at each parking spot there's a sign with a number. A123 or A435, B342, etc. You read your number, go to ANY machine in Montreal, punch in that number and you can put money in your meter. Now this is where they got greedy. They got sick of people using leftover time from previous 'customers' so any time you add money to a specific spot it resets to 0.
So if there is 2 hours on the machine and I want to add an hour (you can only have a max of 3 hours) I will have to pay for the full 3 hours. Furthermore you can not see how much money is left on the meter except by looking at the ticket it prints.
So if you have class and need to add a bit of money to the meter so it'll last till the end of class you have to add the full amount since it will restart.
Now for the mischief. There's nothing stopping you from punching in someone else's number, adding 25 cents and reducing there time to 15 minutes! Essentially guaranteeing a ticket.
So if someone has 3 hours on there meter, and you come by and put in 25 cents it will go to 15 minutes. This can be handy to use against people you don't like or just random strangers with nice cars, etc. Anyways it seems like a big problem.
The only thing I was thinking is that maybe the machine will keep track of the OLD value as well as the new value to prevent this, but it's still screwing over people who want to add money to their own meter.
It just occured to me that without the ability to display the ticket on your car, anyone with or without a vechile can buy all the parking space availability in the city and can resell these tickets for a higher price than the city. I think it would be best for a 'pay-and-display' method on your car dash.
You are quite badly wrong if you assume from availability of DIMM and Flash cards at PC stores that small memory and flash do not exist any more, same slow CPU's.
RAM and flash measured in _bytes_, CPU's under 10MHz continue to sell a lot. And yes, they are quite a bit cheaper than something like these (which seems to be basically guts of a high-end PDA)
Of course you don't find any of those at store, they don't belong there, they are embedded system components, found at electronics store, not something you pick up from shelves at wallmart.
As whether or not you'll save a "significant amount of money" depends mostly on the volume, $10 vs $50 CPU is't much of a difference if you're building one unit and design costs far overweight everything else, but if you're making a million of 'em, that's a lot of cash. There's a place for everything.