Sensoneo Smart bin monitoring (Sensoneo Citizen App) informs citizens of the nearest available empty bin and enables them to be more environmentally responsible

Source: Android description / Image: Judit Urquijo

Useful information

Download: Android 4.1 (32MB) / iOS 9.1 (19.2MB)

Price: free

Language: English / Czech / Arabic / Slovak

Runs offline: no

Last update: Android 30/08/2018 (v. 1.6.42) – iOS 21/08/2018 (v. 1.7.19)

Website of the developer: Sensoneo

Description

Sensoneo is a Slovak company that offers Internet of Things (IoT) solutions for waste management. Specifically, they design and install sensors to know how full the litter and waste bins of the streets are. This information can be consulted by citizens through the Sensoneo Citizen app, allowing them to know beforehand which waste container or litter bin they can use to deposit their waste in a civic manner.

Information provided by the app

To run the app, first, you have to allow geolocation of your smartphone or tablet. Once this requirement is done, the app locates you on a map and shows you the monitored waste disposal bins. Although in the Sensoneo website they comment that they are present in 22 countries, in the application only appear the containers located in the Czech Republic, United Kingdom, Slovakia, Poland, Germany, Italy, Bulgaria, Holland, Russia, United States, Canada, Iceland and Australia. This disparity is due to the fact that not all customers share their data publicly in the mobile application.

To continue, zoom in and observe the status of the containers. Green icons indicate that there is still room. Orange indicates a high fill level and red, a full container. Some waste disposal areas have several types of containers (organic, paper recycling, glass, etc.). In these cases, the app shows the detailed information for each recipient.

You can also see how to get to the nearest empty container. You can also alert about different incidents such as:

  • Bin damaged
  • Bin inaccessible
  • Bin site polluted
  • Sack damaged (in the case of litter bins)
  • Bin lid damaged
  • Bin full
  • Other problem

In this case, all you have to do is take a photograph and send the complaint. Thus, it will be received in the control panel of the solid waste management service. Sensoneo comments that the inclusion of this option is being very useful. Thus, users who want to report the state of bins no longer have to resort to email and the complaint is automatically recorded in the database.

Also mention the Settings option available on the top right. From this section, for example, you can activate and deactivate the display of the bins. Similarly, through the Login, personnel authorized by the waste management entity can log in with the Sensoneo account and solve problems related to sensors in the field (it is not a public function). However, Sensoneo has a specific app for system configuration (Android version only).

Image gallery

The screenshots correspond to the Android version of the application.

Images: screenshots 04-05/09/2018. © Sensoneo

Video

The video is recorded using the Android version of the application (2 min 46 seg).

More information

Sensoneo citizen app

Case study: City of Nitra (Sensoneo, 14/03/2018)

IoT and Smart City trends boost smart waste collection market (GreenBiz, 10/01/2017)

Rating
3.8

Analysis

Smart waste collection solutions have attracted considerable interest in urban environments. The objective of the councils that bet on developing this type of initiatives is, basically, to improve the quality of the service they provide to their citizens, reducing costs and minimizing the environmental impact.

Broadly, these systems consist of placing an ultrasonic wireless sensor inside the waste bin. These devices, from time to time, emit a signal that “rebounds” against the content of the container, allowing to know in a quite exact way how high the deposited waste has reached and, therefore, to know how much free space is left. The mechanism, for example, is similar to the one used by bats to “read” the environment around them.

All this data is received in the control room of the entities responsible for the service, but what happens to the citizens? How can the inhabitants of a city contribute to the proper functioning of the waste collection service? An interesting aspect is to provide information about in which container you can dispose your waste, avoiding it to accumulate on sidewalks and get the roads and pedestrian zones dirty.

The app designed by Sensoneo shows this information in a simple and effective way, the two positive aspects so the app stands out. The information currently offered is very basic, but there is no doubt that this utility can provide great added value. Thus, it could become a means of raising public awareness of proper waste management, for example. As aspects to be improved , it would be convenient to show the date and time of the data provided (the number of measurements is established by each client), since during the tests carried out, it has been possible to verify that the values of a large part of the containers have not undergone any changes.

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Técnico de medio ambiente, community manager y content curator especializada en temas de medioambiente - Environmental technician, community manager and content curator specialised in environmental issues