Intelligent Arduino Garbage Can ♻️
Tags: Arduino, Garbage, Coding, Tinkering

Okay, so the topic is mildly clickbait-esq, but this was actually a STEM Project contender in my University (shoutout to Deshan, Nikita, Shaheem and Dinika, my teammates) but since that event never happened I decided to jot down some few words on this creation so I can salvage something out of it.

Something like this^

If you want to see the entire proposal we made for this project, you can view the slides from here: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1tqTH2z-8C9fRM861DEc47bhG_6U4hrni-SvEPZ_k74w/edit?usp=sharing

But the TLDR is that we created an Intelligent Garbage Can which would send an SMS alert to the Garbage Collectors once the garbage in the can fills up to a pre-determined height so they can collect it effectively.

The current problem with entities such as the CMC is that they usually collect garbage routinely which has a fatal flaw. Sure they can collect garbage every Sunday in a neighborhood but Street A’s garbage cans might fill up by mid-week and Street B’s might get filled up once every two weeks, the routine system is not effective at all.

So we created a prototype to solve this using an Arduino board, a GSM Module, an UltraSound Scanner and a LDR.

Fairly standard equipment.

The GSM Module is inserted with a Mobitel PrePaid SIM.

Arduino Uno R3 Board.

The LDR is the item in the bottom left. The tiny cross can be screwed to the left or to the right depending on how sensitive you want the LDR to be. However since it is Digital, depending on how sensitive you make it, you can only make it give a HIGH or LOW signal back to the Arduino, this works for us since we only need it to see if the Bin lid is open or not (Two Boolean States).

If there is light, that means the bin is open, so the program shouldn’t measure the distance and act accordingly as that can give us wrong values, so only if it is dark (bin is closed), can you actually measure the accurate depth of the bin. This contraption was meant to be attached at the bottom of a bin’s lid.

In Action! Forgive the Death Note Anime Figurine.

The code is also pretty self explanatory, I’ve added comments so you can digest it:

Looks like I’ve added my phone number there as well.

This program will check for multiple conditions and do the final output (Send SMS)

If the bin is closed (We know this from the LDR). If the height is less than the threshold (We know this from the US Scanner). If both conditions are true, then the SIM800L Module will send a message notifying the user and go to sleep for a long time (to prevent the risk from spamming, I wouldn’t want to DOS myself and also sending SMS’s ain’t cheap).

Eventually looking like this:

But yeap, that’s about it. A garbage can that messages you when the garbage can is full. Not the brightest idea if you take out your garbage by yourself because you can see it, but if its a tertiary party that doesn’t know this, they would get the notification to come clean out the garbage to prevent situations like this:

Stolen from ft.lk

These same modules can be manipulated to do other things, do you want to build a motion sensor that sends you an SMS if something is moving about at an Ungodly hour? Can do, the possibilities are truly endless.

If you actually made it here, thanks! It means a lot to me. Here’s a Pokemon created out of garbage for you. And always remember, its called Garbage Can not Garbage Cannot.