Having missed the collection of our bins a couple of times I was looking for a (technical!) solution to this problem. Of course, this had to involve at least one Raspberry Pi.
The resulting solution is shown above. Using a Raspberry Pi Zero W, an Adafruit 12-Channel 16-bit PWM LED Driver, a handful of white 5mm LEDs, an IKEA picture frame and inkjet suitable white acetates we now have an automated bin reminder, which queries a Google calendar and reminds us the evening before the collection day to take our bins out. The careful reader will have noticed that, of course, I have printed one of the bins using the wrong colour. Anyway, after fixing this mistake and setting up our Google calendar with all the collection dates we haven’t missed any more collections.
Reminder for myself: Future work comprises the installation of RFID tags on all bins and an RFID reader on the garden gate so that the bin reminder is disarmed when the bins have been taken out. Bonus points for reminding me to take the bin back in the next day.
