What? Wastr – a smart bin designed to encourage minimising waste, at the hardware hackathon accompanying the IOT//EDI conference
When? 29th May 2015
Where? Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Innovation (ECCI)
Who? Me, Domantas Cibas, Dovile Vitonyte, and Marijonas
What About It?
There were two teams of us competing at a one day hardware hackathon accompanying the last day of the Internet of Things conference at the ECCI. We were provided with ST Microelectronics MBED enabled Nucleo boards and told to make something IOT with it.
After our brainstorming session in advance of the hackathon we decided to go for a smart bin that would use light sensors to detect how full the bin was and generate public social network alerts to ‘shame’ the users into minimising their waste so as generate these less often.
I have to admit that apart from developing the ideas themselves and doing a lot of talking I didn’t contribute a great deal of the coding for this – I should have familiarised myself with the MBED system in advance of attending as there was simply not enough time in the one day to get used to it and use it effectively. I did however learn a lot personally, even if I couldn’t contribute back, and it gave me the opportunity to attend a few of the talks at the IOT//EDI conference itself.
Out of the two teams competing, we won and got a bottle of champagne each so overall I think we did well – although it would have been interesting to have a longer hardware hackathon and with a larger number of competitors.
Blue Pigeons 