Empty Me - IoT rubbish bin
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Problem
Living in a shared-house setting involves dividing house chores amongst the residents, and this includes emptying rubbish bins located inside the house and taking the outside bins to the curb before garbage pickup day.
For most houses, the landlord often sanctions a roster that assigns a given room of the house each week for bin-duty. However, this roster is never strictly followed, not because the residents are lazy or occupied, but simply because they forget their turn, and there is no mechanism to remind them effectively on the fly.
The repercussions of leaving bins full to the brim may often times be severe as rubbish and waste from the kitchen remaining unattended for long periods of time is extremely unhygienic and can spew bad odour and diseases. Basically, a physical roster is not very efficient.
All in all, we are now-a-days more accustomed to acknowledging a notification on our dedicated device as opposed to a roster taped on the wall, and our solution to the bin day problem revolves around this.
Solution
Empty Me is an iOT based solution that assists better waste management for shared houses and student accommodations. It comprises of two parts - an iOS app that allows landlords to add houses, tenants and also to create a bin-duty roster; an internet connected rubbish bin that alerts tenants to throw rubbish away when bin is full via the app.
Process
Empty Me was developed by a team of 2 students as part of their Advanced Mobile Development Unit at Monash University. I was responsible for:
- Developing the backend for storing tenant and house details using Firebase.
- Developing a log-in system in iOS with Firebase with two different portals for landlord and tenant.
- Implementing sensor circuit with Raspberry Pi and Johnny-Five (JavaScript) scripting that detects rubbish levels and uploads it online in real time.
