Patent ID: 7827009

Claim:
A data acquisition and notification system adapted to be associated with at least one array of receptacles, the system comprising: a sensor group of at least one sensor in each receptacle of the at least one array of receptacles, the sensor group adapted to detect a presence of a subject material placed in the receptacle, wherein at least one sensor of the sensor group includes an electromagnetic emitter and an electromagnetic detector arranged such that electromagnetic waves are emitted by the electromagnetic emitter and, if detectable subject material is present in the receptacle, the emitted electromagnetic waves reflect off of the subject material and those reflected electromagnetic waves are detected by the electromagnetic detector; a system database configured to maintain data corresponding to sensor information from the at least one sensor; monitoring hardware communicatively coupled to each sensor of the at least one array of receptacles and controlled by a data acquisition program that causes the monitoring hardware to gather sensor information from the sensor group and communicate the data representing the sensor information to the system database; and a notification system communicatively coupled to the system database and adapted to issue notifications via a communications medium based on the data maintained by the system database.