When it comes to carsharing there must be a key that lets the users access the service. This means users have to be able to find the vehicles, open them, turn them on, and in our case, also find the available parking places. Its 2020 and it’s the smartphone era, so this key had to be an app. The Olympic games are an international event, where people from different countries and cultures come to watch the best sportsmen, so TwizyLine app had to be available on Android and iOS, the two main smartphone OS. The app currently supports English, French, and Spanish.
To develop this app, we decided to use the framework Flutter, Google’s UI toolkit for building beautiful, natively compiled applications for mobile, web, and desktop from a single codebase. Flutter allows to create an application for the 2 main operative systems, by half of the price.
The app is connected to the server and the vehicles using MQTT, an IoT protocol. This was a challenge as it was not easy to implement an IoT protocol to all the app functions.
The most important part of developing an app is making it simple, intuitive, and easy. TwizyLine app shows a login page at the beginning, allowing the user to log in or register into the service through a form. Once the user is logged in, the app stores the credentials so the next time the user opens the app the log in is automatic.
Once the user is logged in, the app shows the user the map to find the TwizyLine parkings. When tapping the customized TwizyLine markers the app displays the name of the parking, the number of available Twizys, as well as the remaining free spots. With just one tap the user can request a Twizy, then the app will inform the server about the request, and the server will choose the Twizy with the highest battery level and will order it to get out the parking. The app will then give the user a QR code to access the leaving zone through the turnstile.
The app has several mechanisms to ensure any situation is covered and properly inform the user if any error occurs through the process, lost of connection, server fall down, …
The user interface is simple and intuitive, but the app has also some admin functions reserved for the service managers. Those functions include:
- Fleet management: that displays a map to see any vehicle of the fleet real time position
- Vehicle direct connection: to send and receive determined commands, making it easier to test and diagnose the vehicles.
- Parking management: to check the parking real time status
- Error log: to see any problems in the service and receive new error in real time.
The TwizyLine app gives users an easy, simple, intuitive, and beautiful access to the service. The admin functions make it easier to manage the parkings and vehicles, reducing the operation costs of TwizyLine. We are TwizyLine, and we are Drawing the future.
