The WasterWiser Owl is a rugged dumpster monitor. With waste management companies constantly falsely charging overage fees without providing proof, waste wiser set out to create the owl, which tracks when Garbage trucks come for a pick up. StudioRed partnered with Waste Wiser to help in its development and execution. In the beginning, research was done on how garbage truck drivers treat dumpsters. What was found is that there are situations where dumpsters get dropped at full force. With that the attachment method was deeply researched to make sure the install was easy and the tracker stayed on. To address the problem, we selected a pair of industrial strength magnets. With that, StudioRed’s engineering team worked to make the device as rugged as possible. Needing to protect the electronics from weathering, the engineering team was debating between 2 processes to achieve that goal: potting the internals or overmolding a cover. Knowing that they needed to protect the solder from the PCBs, they moved towards a resin based potting method to protect the electronics. All this resulted in an incredibly robust monitor that can handle the day to day abuse from the elements and garbage trucks.

• ClientWaste Wiser
• Year2020

Engineering Overview

Resin Potting

Needing to protect the internals from weathering, debris, and collisions, the engineering team opted to potting the internals of the Wastewiser Owl. This increases resistance to shock, vibration, moisture, corrosive agents, and even acts as a fire retardant.   

Low Volume Production

Being heavily involved in development, Wastewiser also asked us to build the first rounds of the product for testing in the field. We ended up assembling and potting the first 50 in our inhouse machine shop.