BigBrainParking

An unofficial, de-Googled client for the ParkSmarter (IPS Group) parking system, built to run on GrapheneOS with UnifiedPush notifications and distributed via Obtainium — no Google Play Services, no Firebase, no app store.

Install it (users)

BigBrainParking installs and updates through Obtainium — no Google Play, no account. Works on GrapheneOS. On your phone (with Obtainium installed), tap:

➕ Add BigBrainParking to Obtainium

or follow INSTALL.md for the manual steps.

Monorepo layout

bigbrainparking/
├── parksmarter-client/   # Zero-dep TypeScript API client (reverse-engineered, live-verified)
├── app/                  # Expo / React Native app (BigBrainParking)
└── .gitea/workflows/     # CI: build signed APK -> publish release for Obtainium

• parksmarter-client — the API layer. All ~40 endpoints, the custom-header auth model, and response models (most verified against production). Runs anywhere; the app imports it directly. See its own README for the API details.
• app — the phone app. React Native (Expo prebuild), MapLibre maps, VisionCamera QR scanning, expo-secure-store token storage, local session-expiry reminders, and UnifiedPush wiring.

Features

Feature	Status	Notes
Phone + password login	✅ wired	tokens in OS keystore
Map of nearby meters (clickable, zoom, live GPS)	✅ wired	MapLibre + OpenFreeMap tiles (no key)
City parking map overlay (2h/3h/4h/no-limit/lots)	✅ wired	the city's printed map, georeferenced — never touches the IPS API
"Park here" pin + time tracking on any city area	✅ wired	GPS or hand-placed pin, auto-detects the area, local countdown
Last-lot + My-location search	✅ wired	opens on your last session's lot; GPS sent only via explicit "My location"
QR kiosk scan → meter lookup	✅ wired	on-device VisionCamera
Save / share kiosks	✅ wired	local (no server favorites API exists)
Active / past sessions	✅ wired	list views + tap for full receipt
Start a paid session	✅ works	confirmed live end-to-end (real $0.10 DL-zone charge); declines surfaced
Ongoing parking countdown	✅ wired	foreground service; ticks down, End / Extend buttons, survives reboot
Session-expiry reminders	✅ wired	local on-device notifications — no server, no push
UnifiedPush (ntfy)	⚪ optional	not needed for reminders; stub for future server-initiated msgs

The city parking map

The City map layer on the Map tab is the City of Sandpoint's printed Downtown & Waterfront Public Parking map, georeferenced and drawn in the same colours as the legend: 2-hour free, 3-hour, 4-hour, no time limit, and the paid city lots. 49 areas in all.

None of it touches ParkSmarter. The areas live in the local database (bundled with the app, refreshed from the zone-labels server, cached on-device), the countdown is the phone's own clock, and the notification is the same foreground service every other session uses. So tracking your time on a city spot works with no account, no signal, no payment, and in Anonymous Mode. Two ways to start:

• Park here — pins your car from GPS and works out which area you're in. No GPS fix (garage, indoors, radio off)? It asks you to tap the spot instead and pins that. The pin stays on the map until you end the session, because "where did I leave the car" is half the point.
• Tap a coloured segment — pick the block directly, no pin needed.

Either way you choose how long to track, capped at the posted limit (a 2-hour space won't offer to run a 4-hour timer — that's just scheduling a ticket). The ongoing notification's second button reads +1 hr here rather than Extend: there is nothing to buy, so it edits the local timer and says so.

The georeference was fitted to OpenStreetMap street centrelines and lands within ~4 m (see tools/citymap/ to regenerate it from a new edition of the PDF). Because a few metres is the difference between two sides of a street, Account → Align city map lets you nudge the whole overlay against a live GPS fix and save it — on the phone, or published to the server for every device if you hold the admin token.

Privacy

BigBrainParking sends your location to ParkSmarter only when you explicitly tap "My location" and search; it opens on your last parking lot instead of your GPS, and ships no analytics/tracking (no Segment/Amplitude/Firebase/Sentry, no ad-ID, no Google services). For a plain-language comparison with the official app — which auto-sends your GPS on map open and bundles that tracking stack — see docs/OFFICIAL_APP_PRIVACY.md. What reaches the API and what never does is also spelled out in the app's About page.

Build & run (dev)

Requires Node 20, JDK 17, Android SDK, and a GrapheneOS device (or any Android device) with USB debugging.

npm install                                   # installs both workspaces
npm run build --workspace parksmarter-client  # compile the client
cd app
npx expo prebuild --platform android          # generate native project
npx expo run:android                          # build + install a dev client

The app talks to prod (apiv2.parksmarter.com) by default — change extra.psEnvironment in app/app.json to point elsewhere.

Notifications on GrapheneOS

Everything here is entirely on-device — no server, no push, no FCM, no Play Services — so it works fully offline. UnifiedPush (ntfy) is wired only as an optional, no-op stub for any future server-initiated messages; nothing time-based needs it.

The ongoing parking countdown. Whenever a session is active — a paid one you bought or a free check-in — a persistent notification shows the time left and ticks down, with End and Extend buttons. It is held up by a real foreground service (modules/bbp-notify, type specialUse), which is what makes it stick on GrapheneOS the way ntfy's does: it survives the app being killed, can't be swiped away, and a BOOT_COMPLETED receiver brings it back after a reboot. The service's life is exactly the session's life — it stops itself, removing the notification, on End, when the meter runs out, or whenever there's no session to show.

The countdown itself costs no battery: the end time is handed to Android as a chronometer, and the system redraws the ticking text with the app closed and no timer of its own.

• End stops tracking and clears the notification. On a free check-in that genuinely ends it. On a paid session it only stops the display — ParkSmarter has no stop-session endpoint, so time you already bought keeps running at the meter either way.
• Extend (labeled Pay on a free check-in) opens the purchase screen for that exact zone. The active session is stored locally with its zone, so this works offline, in Anonymous Mode, and after a reboot. Extending doesn't end anything until the purchase actually goes through.

Expiry reminders fire a configurable lead time (default 15 min) before the end, via AlarmManager. Configure them in Account → Notifications, where a "Send a test reminder" button lets you confirm they fire on your phone; the same screen has a toggle for the ongoing countdown.

Distribution via Obtainium (self-hosted)

Tag a release and CI builds a signed APK and publishes it to this repo's releases; your phone's Obtainium tracks the repo and offers updates. See docs/DISTRIBUTION.md for the full server + CI + keystore setup.