As part of our research we have connected some bin sensors to our smart home. The main objective is to enable our contextual smart home to know if each bin is 'in' or 'out', so that it can remind us to put the right bin 'out' on the right collection day.
To enable our smart home to know if each bin is present or not we have attached a powerful magnet to the base of each bin and these close a reed switch when 'docked' in their normal location.
The reed switch and all wiring is invisibily installed inside some composite wood/plastic, which also ensure the bins 'dock' in place and ensure the switch and magnet are aligned. The wiring is connected to a networked Arduino, hidden within a garden store. It could all be done wirelessly, but it is simpler and much more reliable when implemented this way and we have no batteries to worry about :-)
In order to correctly remind us which bin to put out, our smart home needs to know which bin is meant to be out and on which day. This is actually quite easy to configure as bins are always collected on a Friday in our street and the collection alternates between a normal waste bin and two recycling bins.
We model each bin as an object, so that our smart home can track them:
We can query the status of each bin via all of our smart home user interfaces and also get notifications when they are moved if required.
Our contextual smart home will generate a personalised voice announcement (based on who is at home), to remind someone to put the right bins out.
