Eat Your Pills!

Inspiration

Alzheimer’s disease affects over 6 million Americans, and missed medications are one of the most common, and preventable, complications. Our project was inspired by the countless people who are affected by Alzheimer's diseases and similar causes of Dementia.

What it does

With a custom pill box, patients will be regularly notified when it is time to take their daily medications. When there are no medications present in a given capsule, the patient will be alerted to refill and take their medications.

How we built it

This project was made using a Raspberry Pi Pico coded with Micropython and an obstacle avoidance module. The obstacle avoidance module detects whether pills are present in the case. The Raspberry Pi Pico reads the signal from the module, with a HIGH signal representing the presence of pills, and a LOW signal representing empty. Depending on the time of day, determined by a timer running on a daily loop, an lcd display will alert the patient as to whether or not they should take their pills. An attached buzzer will also sound when it is pill time.

Challenges we ran into

The biggest challenge we ran into was the limitation of available sensors to use. While the project is better suited to the use of a pressure sensor, we struggled to implement the obstacle avoidance module to only read a signal if it detected pills, and does not read a signal from other ambient objects, especially the pill box. The sensitivity of the module was our biggest hurdle that we overcame by creating a rigid pill system. This system was able to minimize unwanted signal readings by reducing physical instability.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of our use of the obstacle avoidance module despite its complications. We were able to use the resources available to us to accomplish our goal, even if other tools would have been better suited to the task.

What we learned

Over the course of this project, we learned how to use the obstacle avoidance module and lcd display with Micropython. With the lcd display's unique api, we had to learn how to clear the display for the next message without any old artifacts left on the screen. We also learned how to set up an IDE for Raspberry Pi development, how to detect our board from the IDE, and how to upload and run files.

What's next for Eat Your Pills!

Future plans for Eat Your Pills includes expanding functionality to include seven days of of the week as well as AM and PM pill times. We would like to implement a locking mechanism for inactive pill times to avoid patients taking incorrect or double doses. To improve our notification system, we would like to implement either an on-person device or phone notification capabilities to directly reach the patient wherever they are to remind them to take their medication. Given the specific conditions for certain medications, the user may also be notified to meet those conditions, such as eating beforehand, prior to their pill time. We want the device to be as user friendly to set up and use as possible

Built With

• micropython
• thonny