During my short time at the “Hogeschool Utrecht“, following the HBO-ICT route, I worked with three other students, each from a different discipline in the ICT program, on a project to create a smart trash container. This container was designed to detect when it was full and notify the city that it could be emptied.
For this assignment, I was responsible for the technical side. I created a prototype of the container that could report how full it was once the lid was closed by a user. The user could open and close the container via a button on the side, which mechanically controlled the lid to open or close depending on its state and reported the amount of garbage inside.
The pitch we presented to our lecturers featured a proof of concept made out of cardboard. This prototype included a servo hidden inside the bin to open and close the lid and two proximity sensors on the lid to detect the amount of garbage inside.
The proof of concept can be viewed in the video below, along with the Arduino code that controls it and the Python code that collects the data from the Arduino.