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Recycling Sorter Camera

Point a camera at an item and it tells you which bin it goes in.

Intermediate20h2–3 people16/20 fit
TL;DR

Build Recycling Sorter Camera for campuses, offices and households in ~20h with 2–3 people. Stack: YOLO + Python + Next.js.

Why it wins: Physical, visual and very demo friendly.

Build flow

01 · Problem
People throw recyclables in the wrong bin, contaminating whole batches.
02 · Solution
An object detection model classifies common waste items and maps them to local bin rules, showing a big coloured answer.
03 · Build
  1. 1Train or fine-tune a detector on waste images
  2. 2Map classes to bins
  3. 3Build a kiosk UI
  4. 4Log stats
04 · Demo
Hold up a coffee cup and a can and show different bins lit up.

MVP checklist

  • Live camera classification
  • Local bin rules
  • Wrong-bin stats
  • Kiosk mode

Tech stack

TechRole
YOLOObject detection
PythonBackend / scripting
Next.jsFrontend + API routes

Reference repos

Open-source projects you can build on. Links checked 2026-10-31.

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