How I Made: BinDayCator
FEATURE
rainbow of wheelie bins
is a common sight on our
streets now. Recycling
continues to grow in
importance, with
councils
issuing multiple colour-
coded bins for us to
separate our refuse.
Councils can’t collect
every bin every week,
and so they are collected
on a rota, one or two
each week.
Like most people, I
used the usual
‘algorithm’ of just seeing
what the neighbours put
out. It works, but there
have been times where
a couple of people put out
the wrong bins, and the
rest of the street followed.
Crowdsourcing data is great,
but it isn’t always accurate,
and in the dark of winter, it’s
hard to make out colours. You
might even totally forget, and
end up chasing the bin lorry in your
pyjamas at 7 am.
The correct thing to do, of course, is to
visit the council website to find out what bin
A
By Darren TarbardBINDAYCATOR
is due, providing you remember to, but I’d
been toying with the idea of making
something to remind me for a while. Just
before Christmas, I forgot to put out the
cardboard and paper bin and, as more
cardboard accrued, it sat in
a corner, taunting me
over the holiday period.
The obvious choice
would be a program
which sent me an
email or notification on
my phone, but it’s easy
to miss yet another
notification in the
constant flow, and I had
a more novel idea. The
idea of a bin-shaped
lamp intrigued me; it
would check the council’s
data and change to the
colour of the due bin,
pulsing on the correct day.
In a world where information,
alerts, and indicators have been
absorbed into all-conquering
touchscreens, I thought it would
be a pleasant change.HARDWARE
When I have a new idea, I first try to prove
the concept is sound. I start with theHow I Made
Never forget to put the rubbish out again
Above
Never miss your
bin colletion again