SmartWaste: Serverless IoT Waste Monitoring System

Inspiration The increasing problem of urban waste mismanagement inspired us to create SmartWaste. Overflowing bins, missed pickups, and inefficient waste routes lead to pollution, increased operational costs, and public health concerns. With cities becoming smarter, we wanted to apply serverless architecture to solve a real-world issue using AWS Lambda and IoT.
What We Learned This hackathon was a deep dive into the power of AWS Lambda and event-driven design. We learned how to: Build scalable, serverless architectures Use AWS IoT Core for device communication Trigger workflows via AWS Lambda and integrate with other services Optimize API Gateway, DynamoDB, and CloudWatch for monitoring and performance
How We Built It The SmartWaste system consists of IoT-enabled waste bins that detect fill levels using ultrasonic sensors. When a bin reaches a threshold, the device sends a signal to AWS IoT Core, which triggers AWS Lambda functions. These functions: Log the bin status to DynamoDB Notify the nearest waste collector via Amazon SNS Update a real-time dashboard using API Gateway + Lambda + S3 (static web hosting We also built a web app dashboard for administrators to track bin statuses, alerts, and pickup routes, powered by React on the frontend and Lambda APIs in the backend.
Challenges We Faced Managing real-time updates and low-latency communication between IoT devices and AWS services Ensuring secure communication via AWS IoT policies Handling DynamoDB throughput limits under concurrent triggers Optimizing cost while using multiple AWS services