Inspiration
Just think about all the energy and resources we could save, and all the carbon emissions that could be prevented, if people thought twice about throwing away recyclable materials.
What it does
It increases awareness about the amount we waste, to remind people to recycle. To accomplish this, it displays the number of things thrown out in a specific bin.
How it was built
It uses an ultrasonic sensor connected to an Arduino to detect nearby objects, and then produces a counter variable that counts how items have passed by. This information is then updated live on an html page.
Challenges we ran into
-The lag of the program when the sensor was reading really high numbers prevented it from counting fast falling objects; this was fixed with a backboard to limit the distance the sensor could detect. -Preventing multiple counts of the same object was carried out by using a moving average to iron out ultrasonic sensor noise. -Displaying the information to an html document. This was performed using the following library: https://github.com/NardJ/HTMLSerialMonitor
Accomplishments that we're proud of
-Finally getting an accurate counter.
What we learned
-Processing Arduino data to display it in html.
What's next for TrashCount
It will be made more permanent and durable, and use a lower energy screen type.
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