Surely you have ultra-wideband radios on your bins too?
3 hours ago
- The author replaced unreliable Bluetooth tags with ultra-wideband (UWB) radios for tracking wheelie bins, achieving centimeter-level distance accuracy.
- A single anchor measures distance to multiple battery-powered tags; a 10-meter boundary determines if a bin is 'Home' or 'Out'.
- Custom firmware on nRF52-based tags supports low-power sleep, wake-on-accelerometer, and over-the-air updates via Bluetooth from the anchor.
- Six bins with different collection schedules are integrated with Home Assistant's Waste Collection Schedule to send reminders and detect when bins are emptied.
- Real-world testing revealed issues like signal gaps during collection; the system now remembers presumed 'Out' status even if contact is lost.
- The project is over-engineered but functional; author plans to potentially apply similar UWB tracking to cats.