After a week a with a double hackathon I look back at a great result. Our team won the 3rd price in the “Hack Food Waste Hackathon”. The team consisted of Paul Wagener, Marieke Acquoij, and me (Marco van Nieuwenhoven).
Testing fun
The Bullebak
3rd prize
The Bullebak is a smart bin which automatically detects which category of food you are discarding. In advance you can determine a weight goal for each category. The bin then gives you feedback if you are still on track. The goal is to make people at home aware of the amount of food wasted.
Here is a short impression on the 2 days:
2014-10-29:
In the mean time there are people interested in the status of the project and even some are interested in a working prototype. I contacted Marieke and she has also a number of persons interested in a prototype. It looks like that the product might become reality. Already I have looked for a load cell to measure the weight of the bin and I am looking for a way to detect a drop of food through one of the portals of the bin. Contact with the bin to the rest of the world, can be done with Bluetooth Low Energy or via a WiFi connection. Still a lot of research to be done.2014-11-12:
Investigated how to reliable detect food dropped in the bin. Two options are interesting to investigate further. Both are based on infrared light. The first one is a light curtain. A lot of samples are available but all rely on a lot of dicrete components. The alternative could be STMicroelectronics VL6180X, a fully integrated proximity sensor. I ordered a sample and I hope I can play with it soon.People who are interested in product updates:
Marieke
Henny
Natasha Chatlein