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Cam, the Can Man! Offical mascot for Can Deux. Definitely not modeled after backend developer Cameron Graybill.
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Case designer Bec posing with their beautiful finished product.
Inspiration
Aluminum cans- they're so ubiquitious, we sometimes stop seeing them. Common as they are, it's easy to forget that every aluminum can is actually worth something: and those pennies at a time can really add up. Inspired by the large amounts of waste college campuses and cities can produce, we wanted to provide immediate, reactive feedback to incentivize recycling and prove that every can counts.
What it does
Can Deux is a recycling station kiosk that tracks collected aluminum and displays information about its equivallent worth in USD, which can be redeemed by returning the collected cans to a local recycling facility. Collected funds are then donated to the causes, charities, or organizations as advertised on the kiosk. Each kiosk tracks and displays its own can totals, as well as the cans collected within the entire network.
How we built it
Frontend: HTML and Bootstrap Backend: node.js., postgressql Hardware: raspberry pi, cardboard, and tape
Challenges we ran into
Accurate readings of falling cans (getting rid of double dectections) and database connections.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
While designing this product, we followed a single golden rule- ease of use. It's easy for a simple project to be overengineered and therefore rendered useless, but using Occam's Razor as our inspiration, we feel we've avoided this problem completely.
What we learned
Sending server calls from the pi and running multiple processes in python.
What's next for Can Deux
A better case design! We'd love to have the fabriation cabalilities to make a better house for our hardware.
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