An app that helps you remember to take out your bins has been developed by two web developers from Saltcoats.

David Morrison and Barry Brotherston have launched the ‘Bindicator’ chatbot app for Telegram – a chat service similar to WhatsApp.

Inspired by the busy lives of the developers, the app allows North Ayrshire residents to receive notifications the night before their bins are due to be collected.

David said: “David said: “We kind of got so caught up in our lives that we were forgetting to put our wheelie bins out, and that caused a lot of frustration.

“We came up with this idea where we could eliminate that by building this service that would send you a reminder the night before your bins were due to go out, so that you don’t have to remember to do it – it’ll just do it for you.

“It asks you a couple of questions to get you registered. It just needs to know your address to then be informed about the bin schedules, and then it uses that every week to work out what bin’s due to go out and then sends you a notification.”

The app is completely free and has been made by David and Barry in addition to their usual jobs - but users will be asked for a one-off voluntary donation to help keep the bot running.

David and Barry’s families have been testing the app, but now it’s finally available to all North Ayrshire residents.

David added: “It’s been running for a couple of months, but we’ve just got our families signed up.

“We want to make it bigger so that it serves other counties – at the moment it just works with North Ayrshire, but we want to add East Ayrshire, South Ayrshire, Glasgow, and Lanarkshire.

“To do that we’d need to test how many people would sign up and how many people would actually use it and as part of that growth we want to add different communication channels like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and even Alexa.

“It’s been stable thus far, but we are expecting a few hiccups over the festive period due to the changes in the bin schedules. We will monitor closely and make necessary adjustments for the future.”

David and Barry say they are in talks with WhatsApp to create a service like the one provided on Telegram.

To download the app you must first have Telegram downloaded, where you can then download the ‘Bindicator’ here.