Project Three - Comparing Garbage and Recycling with Switches

For our most recent Networked Objects assignment, we were asked to log data to a database on Sensorbase, as an exercise to bring information from the physical world to the Internet. Josh Berry and I decided to log the activity of a garbage can and a recycling bin, located side by side in a busy area of the ITP floor. A switch was installed on each, and every time the lids moved, the circuit was disconnected, sending a 1 to the database. We plan to make a physical representation of this data, but we are working on a metric that gives us a fair assessment of the activity of each, ie what is the proper ratio of recycling to garbage. We may also hook up switches to more bins on the floor to study which are being used, which are not, and which could be moved or removed. We set it up like this: one XPort was wired to a breadboard which was connected to an Arduino. The Arduino code sends 0s and 1s via a PHP request via the XPort to a PHP script online that signs into our Sensorbase account and logs the info. Here are some pictures of the result.