RecycleYard
One head over the tipping floor: wrong items in each load, pile hot spots and loader near misses
Does the jobs of WasteSort, EmberWatch and ForkGuard with one brain: a head over the tipping floor photographs every load and flags wrong items (turning the bay light red for batteries and gas bottles), watches every pile for heat that keeps growing, and chimes the loader driver's TruckTag when someone is close behind.
- Who buys it
- Site or operations manager of a waste transfer station, small MRF, skip-hire yard or household recycling centre, usually with 2-4 loaders and 3-6 bays.
- Why it pays
- $2,490 per hall (head, 3 TruckTags, 3 BayLights) + $119/month instead of $6,286 + $163/month for our WasteSort, EmberWatch (one camera) and ForkGuard (3 loaders) bought separately (est.).
- Target price
- $2,490 per hall with 3 TruckTags and 3 BayLights, $149 per extra TruckTag or BayLight, + $119/hall/month (target)
- First-minute wow
- The manager's phone shows one hall: the photo of a gas bottle in ticket 4471 with bay 1 lit red, a warm spot in bay 3 that rose 14 °C in 12 minutes, and the near miss behind loader L-1, all from one box on the column.
What the research found
And how this design answers it
- WasteSort's bin pod and per-bin light bars → the same colour camera checks each tipped load, and one BayLight per bay tells the driver where to tip
- EmberWatch's ESP32 thermal head, Edge Hub and colour bullet camera → the Lepton sits in the same head; the colour camera masks hot engines so they are not called hot spots
- ForkGuard's AI camera on every truck → one view of the hall plus a small TruckTag per loader for impacts, the chime and the pre-shift check
- Three brains (K230D, ESP32 + Edge Hub, Pi Zero per truck) → one Pi 5 + Hailo-8 on one PoE+ cable
- Wrong items are logged against the weighbridge ticket, so a back-charge has a photo
Use case
A Tuesday afternoon at a transfer station
Site managerShift leadLoader driversCustomers' truck drivers
- 01Trigger: a skip truck tips mixed waste into bay 3; a lithium battery pack is in it
- 02Detection: the colour camera sees the battery; 40 minutes later the thermal camera sees a spot in the same place rising 14 °C
- 03Alert: bay 3 light turns red, the shift lead gets the tip photo and then the heat alert; a loader reversing to the spot chimes when a worker is behind it
- 04Action: the loader pulls the hot material out to the quarantine bay; the battery photo goes on the customer's back-charge
Outcome: A warm spot is dealt with while small and the customer pays for the contamination; $3,796 less hardware than three products (est.)
How it works
Architecture
- 01
Sense: Camera Module 3 Wide over the bays, FLIR Lepton 3.5 thermal camera on the same piles, TruckTag impact sensor and button
- 02
Decide: Pi 5 + Hailo-8 finds wrong items, people and loaders; hot-spot growth rules on the thermal frames
- 03
Send: Ethernet over PoE+ to the site network; Wi-Fi MQTT to TruckTags and BayLights; one relay contact to the fire panel
- 04
Tell: RecycleYard app for the manager and shift lead, bay lights for drivers, chime in the loader cab
Hardware
Real parts, buyable today
Bill of materials: about $950 per hall with 3 TruckTags and 3 BayLights at qty 10 (est.).
| Block | Part | Why this part |
|---|---|---|
| Brain | Raspberry Pi 5 8GB + AI HAT+ 26 TOPS (Hailo-8) | Runs the item, person and loader detector plus the thermal tracking; EmberWatch's hub and SafeYard already used it |
| Cameras | Camera Module 3 Wide + FLIR Lepton 3.5 behind an HDPE film window | Colour for loads and people, radiometric heat for piles, both looking at the same bays |
| Fire panel | Omron G6K-2F-Y relay, dry contact | Supervisory signal only, wired by the site's fire-alarm contractor |
| TruckTag | XIAO ESP32-C6, LIS3DH, NeoPixel Stick 8, piezo, button, Pololu D36V28F5 | Impacts, the cab chime and the pre-shift check on each loader |
| BayLight | XIAO ESP32-C6, 2 x NeoPixel Stick 8, Pololu D36V28F5, clear PETG lid | WasteSort's right-bin light at bay size |
| Power | PoE+ splitter to USB-C 5 V 5 A | One cable down the column |
Mechanical
Printable CAD
8 parts, generated from code and checked as closed solids. Pick a part to inspect it, or download the STL files to print.
Loading the CAD…
Real CAD · drag to rotate · scroll to zoomReal CAD · swipe sideways
Bought hardware fitted inside this part (checked in the CAD: nothing collides with the plastic)
- RecycleYard head casehead-case.stl · ASA
- Head lid with dust and rain visorhead-lid.stl · ASA
- Thermal film window cartridgewindow-cartridge.stl · PETG
- Column saddle (20° tilt)pole-saddle.stl · ASA
- TruckTag basetag-base.stl · PETG
- TruckTag lid with LED bar, chime and buttontag-lid.stl · PETG
- BayLight basebay-base.stl · PETG
- BayLight clear lidbay-lid.stl · PETG
Open risks we are working on
- Not a fire detector: the relay is a supervisory signal and is never wired to start suppression; the site's own detection stays
- The colour camera sees only the top of a load; heavy items sink, so it finds perhaps half of what a hand audit finds (WM's own view of tipping-floor cameras)
- Dust and steam on both windows; the film cartridge is swapped weekly and the visor keeps rain off (est.)
- The loader chime is a driver aid over Wi-Fi with about 0.3-0.5 s delay (est.); it never stops the machine
- Cameras on staff and customers: signs, no face recognition, load photos kept 30 days
Design stage only: nothing on this page is for sale. Specifications and prices are targets.