Nextriv Sense Rangeultrasonic distance and fill level sensor

What it is for

Nextriv Sense Range was created for people who manage things you cannot look inside: waste containers, bulk material hoppers, refuse chutes and parking spaces. The shared problem in these scenarios is as banal as it is costly — nobody knows "how much is left" until someone physically drives over and checks. The result: refuse trucks visit half-empty containers, the genuinely full ones overflow onto the pavement, and drivers circle the car park looking for a space the system could have pointed to straight away.

Sense Range answers with a single, deliberately universal device. At its heart is non-contact ultrasonic measurement with a wide ~60° beam and an exceptionally short dead zone: the sensor measures distances from 3 cm to 4.5 m, so it handles a shallow bin as readily as a deep semi-underground container or the space above a parking bay. Three factory-prepared operating modes — standard, container and parking — mean deployment needs no tuning: you pick the scenario and the device sets its own reporting rhythm.

It is more than a rangefinder, though. The built-in accelerometer knows whether the container is standing upright and whether the lid is open, and a thermistor with a range up to 125 °C detects a sudden temperature rise — that is, smouldering waste — before the container turns into a bonfire. Three classes of problem detected by one device, without a single drive-by.

The picture is completed by a "mount it and forget it" build: a sealed IP67 housing, electronics protected by a conformal coating against moisture and fumes, and two replaceable batteries that last more than a decade in standard and container modes. Mounting means two screws — typically on the underside of the container lid — and a few minutes with a phone held against the housing.

Usage scenarios

• Municipality and waste utility: several hundred semi-underground containers report their fill percentage, and the dispatcher plans collection routes only where needed. The truck drives to the full ones and skips the empty ones — fewer runs also means less fuel and lower emissions.
• Car park operator: a sensor above each bay reports occupancy event-driven, the moment a car arrives or leaves. The board at the entrance shows the real number of free spaces, and the operator gains occupancy data for planning and pricing.
• Housing estate manager: bin shelters and refuse chutes stop being a black box. The administration sees which shelters fill up before collection day and reacts before residents start calling with complaints.
• Manufacturing plant: hoppers of granulate, aggregate or pellets report their level to maintenance. The replenishment order goes out once a threshold is crossed — no climbing the silo with a torch.
• Waste fire safety: hot ash or a cigarette butt in a container raises the temperature inside. The sensor alarms when the reading climbs unnaturally fast — long before smoke is visible from outside.
• After a windstorm: a toppled container or a lid blown wide open reports itself thanks to tilt detection. The crew drives exactly where needed instead of patrolling the district "just in case".

Key features

• Three factory operating modes (standard / container / parking) — deployment without parameter tuning; parking mode works event-driven and saves battery.
• 3-in-1 measurement: distance and level + position from a 3-axis accelerometer (tilt, lid status) + temperature from a thermistor up to 125 °C.
• Short dead zone from 3 cm and a wide ~60° beam — the sensor "sees" the whole surface of irregularly heaped waste, not a single point.
• Configuration by phone over NFC — switching on, off and changing settings with a smartphone held to the unit, no opening the housing and no cables.
• IP67 plus a conformal coating on the electronics — resistant to rain, container washing, dust and fumes; operation from −30 to 70 °C all year round.
• More than 10 years on two replaceable batteries (standard/container mode), ~5 years in parking mode — and a battery swap does not mean a device swap.
• Smart reporting: a tilt or an abrupt change in distance triggers an immediate report outside the normal rhythm.
• Flame-retardant ABS+PC housing rated UL94 V0 — a considered material choice for a device hanging above waste.
• Mounted with two screws to a flat surface — installed in a few minutes; CE, FCC and RoHS certified.

In the Nextriv system

In the Nextriv platform every measured parameter has four independent alarm thresholds — warning and critical, lower and upper — so the same sensor can simultaneously watch for "container nearly full" (a warning for the dispatcher) and "rapid temperature rise" (a critical alarm for security). Notifications go out through the channel that actually works for a given team: e-mail, SMS, browser push, Microsoft Teams, Discord or an audible alarm in the app — and the webhooks integration forwards the event to a dispatch system. Every event has its code, status and handling history — from occurrence, through acknowledgement, to resolution.

Dashboards are built from nearly 20 widget types — from fill indicators, through sensor tables, to trend charts of many containers at once — while PDF reports and XLSX/CSV exports turn the measurement history into material for settling accounts with the waste contractor. The platform also watches connectivity itself: a sensor that stops reporting is marked offline and can generate a separate notification.

Typical deployments

• Buildings and property managers: bin shelters, chutes and car parks of housing estates and office buildings under one platform — solutions for buildings.
• Warehouses: bulk material levels in hoppers and feed bins with min/max thresholds — solutions for warehouses.
• Manufacturing: raw material hoppers on production lines and the plant's utility yards — solutions for manufacturing.
• Retail: back-of-house and delivery zones of shopping centres; for indoor bins see its laser sibling — Nextriv Sense Waste — solutions for retail.