ESP32 Smart Bin & friends

During my degree I built a run of small hardware projects. My favourite was a bin that opens its own lid when a hand comes near an ultrasonic sensor, measures how full it is, and can be driven entirely from a web dashboard.

There was also a camera that turns its own focus ring with a motor using a derived formula, a stopwatch built on a stepper motor that reports state to an MQTT dashboard, and a light that switches itself by ambient sensor and can be overridden from a browser.

These taught me what web work never does: physical things break, sensors lie, and batteries die at the worst possible moment.