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IoT based University Garbage Monitoring System
for Healthy Environment for Students
Muhammad Nasir Khan
Deptment of electrical engineering,
The University of Lahore, Lahore, Pakistan
muhammad.nasir@ee.uol.edu.pk
Fawad Naseer
Deptment of electrical engineering
The University of Lahore, Lahore, Pakistan
fawadn.84@gmail.com
Abstract—Clean Pakistan is a government campaign to keep
the nationwide environment of the country clean. According to
higher education commission (HEC) Pakistan report of 2014-
2015, total number of students in universities was 1,295,178.
Growing number of students in universities of Pakistan also
create lots of garbage in universities. In result, the waste
collection and garbage management in universities are a crucial
issue to be concerned by the universities administrator. The
major need of a managed and healthy university campus
environment begins with cleanliness of classes, corridors offices
and parks of campus and we can achieve this with the efficient
management of garbage baskets of campus. A university
campus waste will have managed more efficiently only if the
garbage baskets are placed throughout the campus and
collected well. The major issue in the traditional waste
management system in most of the university campuses is the
unhealthy and overflowing status. A solution is proposed to
upgrade minor and important component of the university
waste management system in this paper, w hich is garbage
basket and its management. The basic idea of this project is to
connect each garbage basket by using internet of things (IoT)
protocol with main sweeper monitoring room for showing status
of each basket and notify wirelessly.
Keywords— Intelligent garbage baskets, Arduino UNO, WiFi
Module, Ultrasonic Sensor, Waste Management.
I. INTRODUCTION
In the last few decades, each campus/hostel coordinator
was accountable for gathering and transferring the wastage of
the covered area. Students/residents were mandatory to
sweep the streets on daily basis and eliminate the wastage
from the city and it was also done on the ground realities in
other cities [1]. In Pakistani universities the traditional waste
management system is collecting and clearing garbage
baskets regularly and periodically by the sweepers
department of university. A university campus will get its
waste managed properly only if the garbage baskets are
placed and emptied on time properly.
If the university
garbage baskets are not managed properly then there is a very
common scenario where the garbage is overloaded and
spilled out of a garbage basket. This eventually creates
pollution in university environment which increases
production of diseases as large number of insects and
mosquitoes breed on in campus. Thus the normal lives of
university students get affected because of the unhealthy
environment of campus.
TABLE-I: List of Acronyms
Acronyms
Definition
IoT
Internet of things
GPIO
General purpose input/output
HEC
Higher education Commission
LED
Light emitting diode
IDE
Integrated development environment
IC
Integrated circuit
USB
Universal serial bus
MCU
Microcontroller unit
SSID
Service set identifier
WiFi
Wireless Fidelity
According to a research [1,2,3]
the population growth is
directly proportional to waste generation. Clean environment
is the most important part of a healthy life [3]. We have
developed an internet of things (IoT) based intelligent waste
management system for university campus which managed
the disposal of garbage from garbage baskets on time and
efficiently. Although the IoT concepts are enough mature in
literature, but the implementations of it are still on the verge
of a new technological revolution in society and industry.
With the help of IoT and electronics modules, the quantity of
garbage in garbage basket is monitored continuously and this
provides an efficient way to manage garbage baskets of
university campus [3, 4].
When the corridor garbage basket is about to be full, the
notification in the form of a lighted led will start blinking on
the map in a sweeper monitoring room, which shows the
exact location of garbage basket in a university campus that
needs to be clean. This paper presents an efficient university
waste management system for a healthy environment for
students to study. IoT based intelligent waste management
system is developed by using Arduino Uno,
wireless fidelity
(Wifi) Module, UltraSonic Sensor and other helping
electronics. This system will continuously monitor the
garbage level in a garbage basket and will prompt an alerting
signal to the respective garbage collection team in a sweeper
monitoring room in the scenario of a nearly filled garbage
basket [3, 5]. Solid waste management dispute is the major
contest to the local administration of both small and large
cities.
This is a distinctive practical approach, for the
implantation of an IoT based intelligent university garbage
monitoring system. The implementation of this system will
include Ultrasonic Sensor, Wifi Module with Arduino Uno to
354
2020 IEEE 14th International Conference on Semantic Computing (ICSC)
978-1-7281-6332-1/20/$31.00 ©2020 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/ICSC.2020.00071
Figure 1: University Garbage Basket Architecture
Figure 2: University Sweeper Monitoring Room Architecture
communicating and sending alerting to sweeper monitoring
room system. We have reviewed few papers which are
directly or indirectly related to smart or intelligent garbage
basket concepts. The literature comprises of different
practical approach to disposal of waste and its management.
Paper [1] discusses different practices and approaches used
to operate Internet of Things and explain the detailed
operations of IoT, and give an overall understanding of
preparing different applications related to data management
using IoT protocol. Authors in [3] propose an idea of
continuously monitoring of the garbage baskets by the waste
management authorities using the concept of Internet of
things.
The garbage baskets are placed at different locations in
the campus. In paper [4, 5], authors proposed a Smart Recycle
Bin system which rewards by computing rewards points on
the base of weight of garbage and the type of garbage inserted
inside the bin using different sensors. This intelligent system
removes the hassle of sorting different types of garbage from
dustbin. If the user inserted a particular waste in a bin, which
is not detected by the system, gets a negative point. Authors
in [6, 7] have suggested a smart garbage management system
similar to [4, 8-10] and in both of these papers, authors have
used Atmel328 microcontroller and infrared sensors for
estimating the level of garbage inside a garbage basket.
The paper is distributed in the following sections as
follows: Section-II discusses literature review for the
proposed IoT
based intelligent waste management system to
monitor the garbage baskets of a university campus. Detailed
explanation of the proposed intelligent waste monitoring
system is also given in Section-II. The result and discussion
of the suggested practical approach is described in Section-
III. Practical conclusion based on real life experimental setup
of IoT based intelligent waste monitoring and management
system is discussed in section-IV.
II. PROPOSED SYSTEM
In the proposed practical method for university
campus waste management system, the garbage baskets are
transformed into intelligent garbage baskets. Then by
applying the proposed IoT protocol, this garbage’s can
communicate with the sweeper monitoring room to update
the real time status of themselves. By the status information
updating, a sweeper can collect the garbage once it gets filled.
IoT integrate all the garbage baskets of university campus to
main sweeper monitoring room using internet. With having
and arranging all the concerned data on a dashboard, it is
more appropriate ease and more feasible solution to handle
the university waste management.
An ultrasonic sensor is installed in each garbage
basket throughout the university campus and power supply of
9-12V is provided. The duty of sensor is to detect the level of
garbage in a garbage basket continuously and reports its
status to the main sweeper monitoring room by
communicating with them by using ESP8266 WiFi module
connected to the Arduino Uno. This is the efficient procedure
and it will be applicable and acceptable in the society.
An approach of using IoT protocol for communicating
the garbage baskets with university sweeper monitoring room
by using wireless mode through university campus WiFi
network has been adopted as shown in Fig. 1. The sensor will
get the information about the capacity of the basket. The
information is transferred to the Arduino and then to the
communication module for further action.
ESP8266 WiFi module has been selected for this
purpose along with Arduino Uno microcontroller
as shown in
Fig. 2. The selection is based on the computation complexity,
receive time and the availability of the module. ESP8266 is a
MCU platform, works on 2.4 GHz ISM band and is free to
use. It uses very small power when it is not connected to any
WiFi network, and uses very low power once it is connected.
It means the life of the battery will prolong and the device can
be used over a long time span. It detects different WiFi
networks in its surrounding and connects to one whose SSID
and PASSWORD is configured in its configuration.
The
process shows the interference free link and the chances of
error are very low. Once it is connected to university campus
WiFi network, it starts communicating with campus sweeper
monitoring room, and start showing its status of fullness. This
shows the advantages of the WiFi module. Different steps of
the proposed architecture are given below.
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Figure 3: Flowchart of proposed system
A. System Architecture
The level of wastage material in a garbage basket is
detected by an ultrasonic sensor, which is HC-SR04. It is
connected with the microcontroller, which is Arduino Uno as
shown in the Fig. 1 of the proposed system model in our
scenario and ESP8266 WiFi module is used to transmit the
detected signal from the sensor to the sweeper monitoring
room.
B. Flowchart
The flowchart of our proposed IoT based embedded
system can be described in Fig. 3. It shows the complete flow
of information and the compactness of the proposed
algorithm. The procedure is very fast and efficient. The
sensor will detect the need of change and the change will be
administered by the main central room.
C. Arduino Uno R3:
The Arduino Uno is a platform based on atmega 328p
AVR microcontroller and is an open source platform
as
shown in Fig. 4. Since it is open source and is easily available
to use and apply for any research work, it is, therefore,
mentioned in the proposed research. It is a 28 pin IC which is
most suitable for the project like us, as it contains much GPIO
connections to make complete project. Arduino IDE software
is also a user-friendly interface to program Arduino Uno
microcontroller. We just need to plug in the USB cable to
connect this platform with personal computer (PC) having
Arduino IDE software [12, 13].
Figure 4: Arduino UNO R3
D. Ultrasonic Sensor:
An ultrasonic sensor module with specific model number
of HC-SR04 shown in Fig. 5, is used to measure the quantity
level of waste garbage collected in the garbage basket. It
operates by transmitting a pulse of ultrasonic sound wave at
a specific frequency which is not hearable to human ear and
then receives it after that sound wave reflects back by striking
any solid waste. This sensor calculates the level of garbage in
garbage basket by calculating the time duration in
millisecond between transmitting a sound wave and receiving
it.
Figure 5: Ultrasonic Sensor HC-SR04
E. University Campus Sweeper Monitoring Room:
The printed map of university campus is pasted in
university campus sweeper monitoring room as a dashboard
and light emitting diodes (LEDs) are placed at exact location
of garbage baskets throughout campus. The red light start
blinking as soon as the intelligent garbage basket get nearly
filled and it notifies the monitoring room to send a sweeper
to that exact location to collect garbage.
As soon as the sweeper collects the garbage from
garbage basket, the LED stop blinking red and turns to green
color, which shows that garbage basket is clean.
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Figure 6: Dashboard of GCUF University Campus Map with LEDs
III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The experimental setup of IoT based intelligent
garbage basket is shown in Fig. 7, which is the compilation
of all different hardware modules in real life. As shows in Fig.
7, ultrasonic sensor is located at top of the basket, facing
downwards inside the basket, which can continuously detect
the presence and level of garbage inside the basket. Once the
full level is reached it will generate a signal for the main
server room. The signal is communicated to the main room
using the communication module, which is also operation in
the freely available frequency band. The other components
are also attached with the prototype basket. Each component
is easily available on the shelf and these components are not
expensive, which increases the acceptability of the project by
the consumer.
The graph shown in Fig.
8 describes the scenario of detection
of ultrasonic sensor, when it is filled and when it is empty.
When the garbage level inside basket increases the
degradation of level in graph clearly depicts it. The graph
describes the complete scenario of how the detection of level
of garbage is detecting. The accurate detection results in an
efficient monitoring system and ultimately provide a clean
and healthy environment to the students of university.
Figure 7: Experimental setup of IoT based Intelligent Garbage
Basket
Figure 8: Ultrasonic Sensor HC-SR04 output Graphical
Representation.
IV. CONCLUSION
An IoT based intelligent garbage basket is formulated for the
accurate monitoring and managing of waste management in
university campus environment. This system alerts the
university campus sweeper monitoring room for the
particular garbage basket throughout the university campus
to help the sweepers to collect the garbage from basket and
clean it respectively, so that garbage wont spill out of the
basket and we can control the spread of diseases by
improving the manual system to the IoT based embedded
system. Thus, this system becomes useful as an efficient
solution in improving the university campus environmental
maintenance.
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V. FUTURE WORK
In future, the waste management of university campus can be
managed properly by integrating all the garbage baskets of
university campus with IoT based embedded system and
connecting it to main sweeper monitoring room.
Furthermore, we can connect different campuses of
university al together and we can also detect the quality of
garbage being inserted by the student, and then separate it
autonomously. Also, the extended version of this paper could
include better or enhanced sensors with more accurate
detection of garbage in garbage baskets.
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