Project Idea: UB parking information on smart phone

I hope this is not a "reinventing the wheel" kind of idea. Professor mentioned about using sensors to track parking space at UB, I wonder what is the status of that project? Is there an app on cell phone that will tell people the status of parking lots?

Basic idea

I'm thinking write a smart phone application that will instantaneously reflect the parking lot availability and provide parking suggestions. Inspired by the "crowd-source sensing and collaboration using Twitter", my app should leverage the power of twitter as a database and a well know platform. The information about available parking space should be gathered from both sensors at the parking lot entrance and tweets from people around the parking lot.

Design

Getting the information:

It would be nice to get information from both of these two ways, but I guess one source will be enough.

1. From sensors at parking lot entrance.
   

   Since there's already some project on this, I guess the only difficulty is to send the data to Twitter. Maybe we can use a "TwitterPeek" device.
   

2. From Twitter user.
   

   e.g. let people voluntarily tweet "#FurnasLot is full", or we can ask everyone on campus "is there any space at #FurnasLot?" and wait for their reply.
   

Processing information and providing service:

After getting information from twitter, we could either let the app itself to process the information or use a server to provided processed data. I'm inclined to uses a centralized web server, for two reasons:

1. Easier to manage data, eliminate false/outdate report, ensure consistency etc.
   
2. Keep track of parking lot usage as research data. There should be some interesting pattern in people's parking habits.
   

The app:

The application should have at least two functions:

1. Showing available parking space on map.
   
2. Provide an easy way to send tweet about parking information.