Full details are in here: GitHub - simonjgreen/BinRange: Have you remembered to take the bins out? · GitHub
The aim is to combine with the fantastic Waste Collection Schedule integration to send tailored alerts based on the actual physical location of the bins. Using the combination of accelerometer and distance measurement, know the state of the bins (home, kerbside waiting, kerbside emptied, moving) and send reminders and alerts based on truth.
I used to do this with a set of Devollo BLE tags an using an ESPHome generic board in only bluetooth proxy mode. This worked ok, but I had some big gaps:
- Battery was an issue, I couldn’t tune down the tags to have a long enough battery life that made me comfortable
- Distance was very sketchy, because distance ranging with BLE alone is really just an RSSI extrapolation and that is not… great
UWB has fascinated me ever since airtags became a thing. I found a vendor on alibaba that would sell be blank tags with known chipsets and chonky batteries in a pleasing IP rated enclosure. UWB is actually pretty overkill for precision it seems, I can get approx 2cm precision out of these. But, better too much than too little and it’s not like it costs you more to do so! I’m getting around 45 meters of range which is not bad at all.
It’s all live now, and has been for a few weeks. Couldn’t be happier with the outcome, so sharing with you all!
[It has occurred to me that having a few anchor points would give the ability to triangulate, I think if I had 4 I could do 3-dimensional triangulation pretty well. Overkill for the pins, but putting them on pet collars could be amazing…]