Rennes Métropole Bin Collection
Never forget to put the bins out again, thanks to Home Assistant
Overview
Grey bin or yellow bin? This week or next week? Rennes Métropole Bin Collection answers these questions for you.
It's an integration for Home Assistant, the open source home automation platform. It knows the collection days for household waste (grey bin) and recyclables (yellow bin) in the 43 towns of Rennes Métropole (Brittany, France) and the districts of Rennes, and reminds you the evening before.
The dates come from the official calendars published every year by Rennes Métropole, bank holiday shifts included. The integration is available in French and English.
The calendars cover houses with wheeled bins. Rennes city centre and apartment buildings have no published calendar.
Why this project
The collection calendar exists, and it's clear... but it's a PDF. It doesn't remind anyone on Wednesday evening. The idea: let Home Assistant take care of it, with a notification at the right time. And share the result with everyone in the area who runs Home Assistant.
Installation
- In HACS, add the custom repository (or click "Add to HACS" below), category Integration.
- Install "Collecte Déchets Rennes Métropole", then restart Home Assistant.
- Settings → Devices & services → Add integration → "Collecte Déchets Rennes Métropole".
- Pick your town or district. That's it.
Features
Your town in one click
Pick your town, or your district in Rennes, from a list. Several zones are possible (home, second home, family...).
Calendar
One event per collection day, to show on a dashboard or use in your automations.
One sensor per bin
Date of the next grey and yellow bin pickup, number of days left and the next five dates.
"Put the bin out"
Turns on the day before the collection at 6 pm (configurable) until the truck comes. Hook up a notification, a light, a voice announcement...
Bank holidays included
The dates come from the official calendars, bank holiday shifts included.
Automatic updates
New calendars are published every September. Nothing to do on your side, and a local cache takes over if the data can't be reached.
Screenshots
Dashboard
Upcoming pickups and the month's calendar (in French)
The reminder the evening before
An automation on "Put the bin out"
Five ready-to-use entities
Calendar, one sensor per bin, next collection, "Put the bin out"
Setup
Just pick your town or district
How it works
Rennes Métropole only publishes these calendars as PDFs. A Python script reads them with PyMuPDF, one coloured box at a time, checks each date against the rule printed in the legend, and publishes the result as a JSON file on GitHub. The integration downloads that file: a data update reaches every installation, without a new release.
I describe the whole journey, from reading the PDFs to the notification, in a blog post.