Surely You Have Ultra-wideband Radios On Your Bins Too?

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Simon Green has built BinRange, a home project using ultra-wideband radios and Home Assistant to detect whether six wheelie bins have left their usual storage area. His report describes promising distance tests, but the system is a personal build, not a commercial product or a general performance test.

Simon Green has built BinRange, a do-it-yourself system that uses ultra-wideband (UWB) radios to tell Home Assistant when his six household bins have moved away from their usual storage area. The project addresses a gap in the home-automation software: it can show which bins are due for collection, but, as Green writes, it could not tell him whether he had actually put them out.

BinRange consists of one fixed radio anchor, six battery-powered tags, custom firmware and a Home Assistant setup. Green combines the tags’ location readings with collection information from the Waste Collection Schedule integration, which he says tracks his council’s schedule. A ten-metre boundary separates the system’s “Home” and “Out” states when it has a fresh reading. Green says that threshold suits his installation; it is not presented as a standard distance for other homes.

The six bins serve different purposes and do not all follow the same collection schedule: general waste, food compost, garden waste, two recycling bins and glass. Green’s aim is relatively limited: detect whether a bin has moved far enough from its normal storage spot. He considered using extra anchors to work out direction or position, but says one anchor was enough to begin testing the use case.

Before attaching tags to the bins, Green tested two Makerfabs ESP32-WROVER/DW3000 development boards, powered over USB. In one test at about ten metres, he reports that changing the boards’ orientation from flat to upright raised the observed success rate from 37% to 100%. He also found that a slower radio setting with a longer preamble worked better than the initial fast setting. These results describe his tests, not a broad evaluation of UWB equipment.

From Collection Reminder to Bin Status

The project shows how home automation can join scheduled information with a physical status check. A calendar or reminder can say a collection is due; a movement sensor can help indicate whether the bin has been taken out. For households managing several bins on different days, that distinction could make reminders more useful, provided the radio system works reliably in the home’s actual layout.

Green’s account also highlights a practical trade-off in sensor choice. His earlier Bluetooth-tag experiment relied on received signal strength to estimate proximity. He says readings wandered, batteries drained quickly and the outdoor proxy proved unreliable in that installation. UWB instead measures signal travel time to estimate distance, which can offer a more direct ranging method. It does not remove obstacles or guarantee a good reading, however, and Green’s tests show that setup details such as antenna orientation and radio settings matter.

For readers, BinRange is best understood as a personal engineering project, rather than evidence that UWB bin tracking is ready as a plug-and-play household product. Its value lies in the specific problem it tackles and the measurements Green shares, while the one-anchor arrangement and ten-metre rule remain tied to his home and equipment.

Why Bluetooth Was Not Enough

Green says the idea began several years ago, when he tried inexpensive Bluetooth tags and an outdoor Bluetooth proxy to work out whether his wheelie bins were nearby. The approach used received signal strength (RSSI) as a rough indication of distance. In his experience, walls, parked cars, reflections, antenna orientation and differences between radios affected the signal, making it difficult to tell whether a bin had moved or the radio environment had changed.

His interest in UWB grew after learning about the technology through AirTags. UWB estimates distance from the time a radio signal takes to travel between devices, rather than inferring distance from signal strength. Green stresses that surroundings still affect whether a signal gets through. He returned to the bin-tracking idea and, over several weeks, developed the combination of tags, anchor and Home Assistant integration he calls BinRange.

In a later recorded test, Green measured a gap of 10.1 metres and reports an average radio reading of about 10.09 metres, with a standard deviation of three centimetres. He also describes an initial calibration in which a reading differed from a tape-measure result by less than two centimetres. Those are separate observations from his setup, not a guarantee of that accuracy across different distances, tags or orientations.

“Home Assistant already knows which bins are due for collection.”

— Simon Green, in his BinRange report

Range, Reliability and Replication

Green’s report provides results from one installation. It does not establish how well BinRange would work with different bin materials, garden layouts, weather, radio interference or tag placements. He reports reliable outdoor readings to roughly 30 metres, with intermittent readings farther away; the furthest recorded reading was 37.28 metres, but with gaps. The supplied report text ends while discussing the outdoor walk, so further detail about those conditions is unavailable here.

The measurements also do not settle how often the finished system correctly classifies a bin as Home or Out over repeated collection days. The 37% and 100% success rates refer to a test at about ten metres with different board orientations, not long-term performance of all six battery tags. Green’s initial result of less than two centimetres’ difference from a tape measure should likewise not be read as guaranteed accuracy in every setting.

The source does not provide a product price, battery-life figures for the final tags, a public release plan or independent testing. It also does not establish whether the build instructions, firmware or hardware configuration are available for others to reproduce. The system’s dependence on a fresh reading is clear, but the report supplied here does not specify how Home Assistant handles missing readings or how often each tag reports.

Testing the Six-Tag Installation

The next meaningful measure of BinRange would be how it behaves during ordinary collection routines: whether each of the six tags is detected consistently, whether the ten-metre boundary suits the storage area, and how battery life holds up. Green’s report describes the system’s components and early tests, but the material provided does not announce a launch, a wider trial or a timetable for further development.

Readers following the project would need further reporting from Green to learn whether the final installation has been tested over multiple collection cycles and whether he has published build files or longer-term reliability results. Until then, BinRange remains a reported DIY build with encouraging measurements in particular tests and unresolved questions about repeatability in other homes.

Key Questions

What is BinRange?

BinRange is Simon Green’s DIY bin-tracking project. It uses a fixed UWB radio anchor, six battery tags and Home Assistant to determine whether his bins have moved beyond a set boundary.

How does it decide whether a bin is out?

Green set a ten-metre boundary: a bin is treated as Home inside it and Out beyond it, provided the system has a fresh reading. He says the threshold is specific to his installation.

Why did Green move from Bluetooth to UWB?

His earlier Bluetooth setup used signal strength to estimate distance, which Green found unreliable in his installation. UWB estimates distance from the time a radio signal takes to travel, though obstacles and setup still affect readings.

How accurate were Green’s tests?

In one recorded test, a measured distance of 10.1 metres produced an average reading of about 10.09 metres, with a three-centimetre standard deviation. These are results from Green’s test setup, not a general accuracy guarantee.

Is BinRange available as a product?

The supplied report describes a personal project. It does not say that BinRange is commercially available or provide a release plan.

Source: hn