IoT 'smart' Garbage Can

Using the built-in LIDAR distance sensor on the new TrackALL device (on Kickstarter right now!), we can instantly turn a garbage/recycling bin into an IoT connected 'thing'. We'll send the information from the TrackALL (you can use either Sigfox or mcAir) to the cloud and visualize that data into thethings.io Cloud dashboard application.

A real smart city solution (with many other use-cases!)

Using either mcAir or SIGFOX, there are tons of feasible and truly realistic IoT solutions:

Note - The LIDAR sensor on the TrackALL has a range of up to 1.5 meters. If you want to measure further distance, you can connect a different LIDAR sensor with longer range or use an ultrasonic distance sensor instead 

How the new mcThings Platform works:

With the advent and soon to be released mcCloud feature, the mcThings platform now provides the ability to connect to devices remotely, from anywhere in the world and within range of an mcGateway, so that you can easily debug and make programming changes to the application on your mcThings device. New mcOS (device firmware) is also updated OTA through mcCloud and the mcGateway.

After writing a programming script within mcStudio and uploading that to your mcCloud security domain, you can then deploy applications to your devices easily from anywhere. Information incoming from your devices travels either to Sigfox to the cloud or to an mcGateway over mcAir (a LPLAN) and are forwarded, through integrations that you setup within your security domain, to any type of application that can receive webhooks (HTTPS). You can even send the same information to multiple different applications like Microsoft Azure, Ubidots, AWS, Losant, etc. Check out this visual:

Architecture of the new mcThings platform

Network options

You can use either Sigfox or mcAir to send the data to the internet and onto the application of your choice to view/capture/etc. the data. Sigfox, where available, provides fantastic range and is perfect for sending location (and other data) from Sigfox enabled devices. If you are not within Sigfox coverage, you can send information from the device to the cloud within range of an mcGateway (theTrackALL device has an mcAir range of up to 1.2km!) . You can also log data to the device and send it to the cloud when the device comes back into range of an mcGateway. And finally, you can also use both networks in tandem (store data on the device while sending exception reports out using Sigfox) if you wish. Check out more info in our Kickstarter campaign!

Installing the TrackALL device

Using our local garbage cans, we installed the TrackALL onto the inside of the lid so that it could measure the fullness easily.

Visualizing 'fullness' in thethings.io

After writing a short script to measure the distance using the LIDAR on the TrackALL, we then uploaded that script to mcCloud and deployed it to our device. We setup an integration in mcCloud to direct the information to thethings.io using webhooks!

thethings.io allows for lots of different ways to visualize your data including graphs, gauges, LED's, etc

Many ways to setup a dashboard/solution to visualize the data on thethings.io

You can also put the 'fullness' variables into a graph to track them over time

You can also create customized dashboards for your clients and even customized applications as well!

Thanks for reading and be sure to check out our Kickstarter campaign to be among the first to use the new TrackALL for countless IoT use-cases!