Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Trends in Electronics and Informatics (ICOEI 2019)

IEEE Xplore Part Number: CFP19J32-ART; ISBN: 978-1-5386-9439-8

An IoT based Smart Garbage Alert System

Paavan Lakshmana Chowdary S, Sai Teja G, Naga Mahesh K

Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering
National Institute of Technology, Andhra Pradesh
Tadepalligudem, 534101, INDIA

Abstract—With day by day increase in population, number of

start-up units, the average waste generated by an individual is
increasing every day which leads to severe waste management
issues. Nowadays sanitariness and cleanliness are one of the
agitated issues by any state all over the world. This is mainly
caused due to improper waste monitoring and management
processes. To overcome these problems a garbage monitoring
system is designed which periodically measures the level of trash
in the containers and alerts the concerned authorities. This is
done by positioning a sensor network to collect the garbage
levels in the containers and remotely triggering the required
controls using IoT. IoT is one well-known technology which helps
in solving many real-world problems. Internet of Things (IoT)
strongly supports the notion of interfacing and observing the real-
world objects (things) through the Internet. The detection of bin
parameters in the container is carried out using the NodeMCU
ESP8266 microcontroller board. The main objective of this paper Fig. 1. An overspilled garbage container in a public place
is to trigger an alert message to the people concerned when the
container is filled thereby avoiding the overspilling of garbage.
Keywords—Adafruit, IFTTT, IoT (Internet of Things), Load
Cell, NodeMCU ESP8266, Ultrasonic sensor an automated generated email and by mobile app notifications.
The uploaded values to the cloud service can be monitored
I. I NTRODUCTION by logging in from anywhere.
The clearance of garbage or trash in urban areas is one of
the difficult and demanding tasks for the majority of states
all over the globe. It is because the waste that is getting
generated is unpredictable due to the day by day evolution
of E-marketing. There was always a need for better waste
monitoring and management system for both industrial and
municipality systems. At present, there are many skillful
mechanisms [8] existing for collecting and managing waste.
The only thing that they lack is the smartness to get the
information about the waste generated. Due to this the
non-uniform collection and over spilling of waste occurs
frequently. Also, the present day waste collection system is a
time taking process and also requires huge labor.

The proposed system is automated using the Internet of
things (IoT) technology. The system proposed has three parts:
The part-I deals with data sensing and acquiring. This is
done by the sensor network placed in the bin to measure
and collect the information such as garbage weight, leftover
space in the container. Part-II deals with data processing and
transmission. The data acquired by the sensors is processed
by the microcontroller and is transmitted to the cloud service
using Internet connectivity. The part-III of the system is
triggering an alert. The concerned authorities are notified by
Fig. 2. Block Diagram of the proposed system
The further discussions in the paper were given as: Section
II which gives the basic view of research done in this
area. Section III includes the implementation setup which
comprises of the hardware and software used. Section IV
describes the complete working of the system. The final
results are given in Section V. Section VI tells the future
scope of the system.

978-1-5386-9439-8/19/$31.00 ©2019 IEEE 425

 Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Trends in Electronics and Informatics (ICOEI 2019)
IEEE Xplore Part Number: CFP19J32-ART; ISBN: 978-1-5386-9439-8

II. LITERATURE SURVEY deployment like Smart Environment, Domestic applications,

Security applications, etc.
This section deals with some unique papers to get
information about the related work which has been III. IMPLEMENTATION SETUP
performed. Smart Garbage Monitoring System [1] can A. Components required:
be comprehensively ordered as isolation, collection, and
1) Hardware :
transportation. Isolation of the strong waste should be
• NodeMCU ESP8266
possible at the root level where the subjects isolate the loss
• Ultrasonic Sensor
as indicated by wet, dry and medicinal waste and dump the
• Load Cell and HX711
trash to the individual containers put at their homes. This
system consists of bins with sensors like ultrasonic, moisture 2) Software :
and PIR(motion sensor). The sensors will be interfaced to • Arduino IDE
NodeMCU and the data read is sent to cloud service where • Adafruit Cloud Service
the data will be collected. Based on the amount of trash, the • IFTTT Application
maintenance person of that apartment gets an alert message.
The proposed system in this paper is not able to measure
the weight of the trash container and also it employs three
ultrasonic sensors which increase the system hardware.

Smart Bin: Internet of Things [2] is proposed to manage

the waste by monitoring the level of garbage in the bin. It
is done by using an ARM controller and ultrasonic sensors.
Also, this system can alert users based on four types of
garbage: domestic, paper, glass, and plastic.

Smart Garbage Monitoring and Clearance System [3] is

designed such that when the sensor data value exceeds the
threshold value, the updated data values and a notification is
sent to android through the GSM system. This system also
provides the bin with LEDs to indicate the status.

IoT Based Smart Garbage Monitoring System Using

ESP8266 with GPS Link [4] proposes a system with reduced Fig. 3. Proposed Setup
cost and real-time monitoring. This system employs IR
sensors and Atmega Controller to transmit data to the cloud.
This paper provides us a system with reduced hardware since B. NodeMCU ESP8266
a GPS link is used in the programming part instead of GPS The ESP8266 is the best decision for Internet of Things
tracker (hardware). IoT Based Smart Garbage and Waste due to its minimal effort and low power utilization capacities.
Collection Bin [5] [10] system is similar to [4], additionally, It accompanies inbuilt WiFi Module, Full TCP/IP convention
a WiFi module is used here. WiFi Module works using stack, onboard processing, and capacity features. The Real
802.11b/g/n protocol, WiFi Direct (P2P), Integrated TCP/IP Time Operating System (RTOS) and WiFi stack allow about
protocol stack. The drawback is that the protocol overhead is 80 percent of the dealing with the ability to be available for
too small. customer application programming and enhancement. It has
17 General Purpose Input Output (GPIO) pins for interfacing
IoT Based Smart Garbage Monitoring and Alert System Us- with outside segments and works with 3.3V
ing Arduino UNO [6] [11] deals with the basic implementation
of Garbage Monitoring system using Arduino UNO, GSM
module, WiFi module. A connection is established between
transmitter and receiver using the GSM module and WiFi
module is used to get a unique IP address for each bin which
is used for SMS notification purpose. The drawback of this
paper is that it uses Arduino which is an outdated board and
ESP8266 NodeMCU is better than Arduino in all aspects. A
state of the art review on the Internet of Things [7] details
about different wireless mediums that are suitable for the Fig. 4. NodeMCU ESP8266
Internet of Things. It gives a clear review of the IoT fields of

978-1-5386-9439-8/19/$31.00 ©2019 IEEE 426

 Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Trends in Electronics and Informatics (ICOEI 2019)
IEEE Xplore Part Number: CFP19J32-ART; ISBN: 978-1-5386-9439-8

C. Ultrasonic Sensor used by HX711 for communication with the microcontroller.

The HC-SR04 ultrasonic module [13] is a 4 pin sensor Four wires from the Wheatstone bridge of the load cell are
used for measuring distance without any contact to the object. connected with HX711.
The module has a transmitter, receiver and a control circuit
integrated with it. The transmitter transmits ultrasonic waves
of frequency 40 KHz into the air. The reflected wave from
the obstacle is received by the receiver. The 4 pins of the
sensor are Vcc, Ground, echo, and trigger. The trigger pin is
set high for the duration of 10us to start the measurement.
The echo pin is high for a duration corresponding to the time
it took to receive the echo from the wave it has sent.
Fig. 7. HX711

The four colored wires red, black, white, green from

Wheatstone bridge of load cell are connected to E+, E-, A+,
A- pins of HX711 respectively.

Fig. 5. Ultrasonic Sensor

D. Load Cell and HX711

A load cell is a category of a transducer whose output is
an electrical signal which corresponds to the force applied.
The load cell used is of pressure gauge type. These load cells Fig. 8. Setup Circuit Diagram
are usually appended to support beam or structural bearing
of an application which perseveres weights and stresses
regularly with appropriate adhesive or superglue. Deformation E. Adafruit
of strain gauge occurs when the load cell material deforms Adafruit is a cloud service [12], primarily meant for
appropriately. This results in a change in resistance of strain storing, monitoring, retrieving data at any time. It can be
gauge which is proportional to strain. connected to services like IFTTT, Zapier, Weather, etc. Feeds
are the core part of this cloud service [9]. They hold the data
A Wheatstone bridge consisting of four strain gauges is which is uploaded (the monitored data). Feeds are created for
usually present in the load cell. Due to the imbalance between every parameter being measured.
the two sections of the bridge, an electrical signal output
corresponding to the potential difference is generated. The
signal generated is generally in the order of few millivolts
and the signal strength is boosted by an amplifier before
further use.

Fig. 9. Feeds created in Adafruit Cloud

Fig. 6. Load Cell

HX711 is a load cell amplifier [14] used in order to read Fig. 10. IFTTT service in Adafruit
weight measurements accurately. A two-wire annexation is

978-1-5386-9439-8/19/$31.00 ©2019 IEEE 427

 Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Trends in Electronics and Informatics (ICOEI 2019)
IEEE Xplore Part Number: CFP19J32-ART; ISBN: 978-1-5386-9439-8

F. IFTTT Data Processing: The data read by the sensors is processed

IFTTT abbreviated as IF THIS THEN THAT, is used for
creating applets according to specified conditions. It can be
integrated with services like Adafruit, Gmail etc. The applets
created are triggered by the changes that occur in integrated
services. It is available as both web-based application and
mobile application.
by the micro-controller NodeMCU. Processed data is Garbage
Level (in cm) and Weight (in gm) which will be displayed
on the serial monitor.
Data Uploading: This occurs only when the garbage level
and weight of garbage go past the threshold values. The
NodeMCU ESP8266 has an inbuilt WiFi module which also
works as a transmitter in the system. Now, the processed data
is sent to cloud via MQTT protocol using the internet (public
WiFi hot spots). The frequency at which the data is uploading
can be altered by varying the frequency of data sensing.

Data Display: The uploaded data can be viewed in

Adafruit cloud service from anywhere. It stores the data along
with time stamps. In this cloud service, we can view the data
uploaded in tabular and graphical format.

Triggering: A certain threshold value is set to each

parameter(leftover space and garbage weight). The measured
values get uploaded and the trigger is generated only when
Fig. 11. Applets creation
both the thresholds are crossed, which is the ”key point” of
the system. Trigger generation is done by IFTTT using the
values uploaded to the cloud. This trigger will generate an
alert message via Mail and mobile app notication. The mobile
app notification gives information about the leftover space
and weight of garbage in the bin. The alert message is sent
continuously until the garbage in the bin is removed by the
concerned member.

Fig. 12. Applets created in IFTTT app The work progress can be easily visualized with the help
of the flowchart:

IV. METHODOLOGY
Arduino IDE software is used to flash the code on to
NodeMCU ESP8266. The working process starts at the
garbage bin. The ultrasonic sensor is placed on top, the
weight sensor and the microcontroller are placed at the
bottom basement of the garbage bin. The sensors are placed
at optimal positions for accurate data sensing and reading
purpose. Use of NodeMCU enables each bin a unique address.
The whole work process can be divided into the following
parts: data sensing, data processing, data uploading, data
display, and triggering.

Data Sensing: Ultrasonic sensor and Load cell sense

the garbage level and weight of garbage respectively and
accordingly send the signals to NodeMCU. By using only
an ultrasonic sensor, the exact status of a bin may not be
obtained due to various cases involved in the shape and size
of bin and non-uniform distribution of waste inside the bin.
So to overcome this, the weight sensor is integrated into the Fig. 13. Work Flow
system to get the exact status of the bin.

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 Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Trends in Electronics and Informatics (ICOEI 2019)
IEEE Xplore Part Number: CFP19J32-ART; ISBN: 978-1-5386-9439-8

V. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION The proposed system uses a more powerful and efficient
microcontroller and the data is uploaded to the cloud only
A. Threshold values:
when leftover space and garbage weight in the garbage
Left over space (in cm) = 30 container cross thresholds. The collected data is stored in the
Weight of garbage (in gm) = 100 cloud and can be used for predicting the waste generation.
The automated execution of commands and triggering helps
in providing exact values of the garbage levels resulting in
efficient garbage collection.

VI. FUTURE SCOPE

Fig. 14. Left over space in the container
The proposed design of the smart garbage alert system is
very flexible and can be easily installed at more crowded
regions like airports, railway stations, bus-stands, shopping
malls, multiplexes, offices, etc. The garbage thus collected
can be dumped to convert into compost using the traditional
methods and new techniques. The conversion of bio-
degradable waste to compost and recycling of hard waste are
the best solutions for waste management. A regular cycle can
be started to feed the compost thus generated as manure in
the crop fields supporting a clean and green environment.

More intelligence can be added to the existing system

to make it read stringent and error-free values, analyze the
waste generation pattern using advanced artificial intelligence
technology.
Fig. 15. Weight of the garbage in the container

VII. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
We are grateful to our project guide Balaji D for his
constant support and encouragement. We would like to thank
Dr.D.S.Chandu and Vijaya Bhaskar A for their valuable
suggestions.

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 Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Trends in Electronics and Informatics (ICOEI 2019)
IEEE Xplore Part Number: CFP19J32-ART; ISBN: 978-1-5386-9439-8

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