The Compjoster

Inspiration

We noticed that while the Ratty and Vdub have ways to reduce waste by composting, many of the other dining halls do not. We learned that the takeout containers at Jos are biodegradable so we decided to make this project about making our favorite dining hall more sustainable and more fun by making composting into a game!

What it does

The CompJoster is a compost bin, built to look like an arcade game. It prompts you to input your bannerID and then detects the number of containers you drop into it. It then sends this information to thecompjoster.co where you can see your updated stats! You can see how many boxes you've composted at Jos during your entire time at Brown, as well as a leader board of top ten composters (for campus wide clout!). The number of boxes you have also correspond to game points which you can redeem for fun prizes, like a free Jos cookie. The goal is to make it to the leaderboard and win as many prizes as possible!

How we built it

We built the CompJoster prototype out of cardboard . Attached to our CompJoster prototype, we hooked up a 4x4 keypad that's attached to an Arduino Bread Board, allowing input. If it detects a valid bannerID, it will trigger the ultrasonic sensor. This sensor counts every time a box enters, keeping a track of the total box count and corresponding bannerID. It then uploads this as a JSON file to our website which will parse through the information and update the user's stats and leaderboard stats accordingly.

Challenges we ran into

Our main challenge was connecting hardware and software. We tried implementing ESP 82 66 which could have exported the data in live time directly to our website. However, it was not compatible with our laptop unfortunately, and we had to find other ways around it. Keeping the board together and wiring was another difficulty we faced because the wires themselves were short. Parsing the data and working with the data on the website was another difficulty since we had to find a way around not using the ESP. Also, deploying the front end and back end and connecting them on separate servers was a challenge.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We definitely did a much more complicated project than last year since we have learned so much since then. This year, we really took advantage of our different academic backgrounds to make a cool project.