Every bin, a signal
EcoRoute
Smart-bin network for subdivision waste collection: ESP32 telemetry over MQTT, fill prediction, and HOA dashboards that dispatch trucks to bins that actually need pickup.
Problem
Cebu subdivisions still collect on fixed calendars. Some bins overflow mid-week; others get a truck visit while half empty. There is no feedback loop from the field to dispatch.
Architecture
Product flow
System architecture
Sense → Route loop
My responsibility
I owned the multi-tenant backend and admin dashboard: Bun + Hono APIs, Drizzle on PostgreSQL/PostGIS, MQTT telemetry ingest, the IDW fill heatmap, route generation plumbing, and the operator surfaces HOA admins actually use.
Decision
Treat every bin as a live signal. Fuse three ultrasonic readings (IR-gated) into fill state, publish over MQTT into a shared telemetry processor, forecast time-to-threshold, then shortlist bins and solve CVRP with OR-Tools using OpenRouteService road distances when available, with Haversine nearest-neighbor fallback.
What could fail
Uneven piles fooling a single sensor, lid-open echoes, MQTT drops, offline bins, bad GPS, and route solves that time out or ignore truck capacity.
How I made it reliable
Triangular sensor fusion plus IR lid gating rejects disposal noise. MQTT ingest validates payloads before writes; HTTP device fallback exists when the broker path fails. Route generation falls back to nearest-neighbor if the AI service is down. Multi-tenant subdivision scoping keeps HOA data isolated.
Result
Defended and passed University of Cebu Banilad capstone with a working hardware prototype and multi-tenant ops dashboard. Marketing site at ecoroute-about.pages.dev; ops dashboard at ecoroute.yeems214.xyz.