Before: Regular Pill Box
As shown in Figure1, it is a picture of a pill box that you would normally by at a store. It has seven compartments for the seven days of the way. The sole purpose for this box is to organize the user's medication. At the end of ten weeks, the engineers will design a more efficient for the user.
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| Figure 1: A pill box |
Proposal:
The Gantt Chart
This chart will be our timeline for the next ten weeks in order for our group to keep track of our progress.
Week
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Task
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1
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2
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3
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4
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5
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6
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7
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8
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9
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10
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Literature study
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x
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x
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x
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Circuitry
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x
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x
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x
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x
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x
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x
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x
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Modifying standard pill box
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x
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x
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Testing
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x
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x
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x
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Final Modifiations
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x
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x
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Final report
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x
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x
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x
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The Budget:
This is our estimated budget in order to create a deliverable of a Smart Pill Box.
Category
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Projected Cost
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Base
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$14.99
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Electronics
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$42.80
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TOTAL
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$57.79
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Smart Pill Box
The pill box will now be used with two different Arduinos. From the code created, the one Arduino will communicate with the other Arduino through a I2C Master/Slave Communication. This will allow us to have enough pins to fulfill our criteria of having all the buttons for all seven compartments for the pill box. When all the green LEDs are turned on one the "master" Arduino board, a signal code will be sent to the "slave" Arduino. This code will allow the "slave" to continue one the activities for the rest of the pill box as well as the reset button.
In order to determine if the pills were taken is not by a sensor, but by how many times the button has been released. By counting the amounts of times the buttons were released, this will be useable for all users who need to take medication for more than once a day. The use of a micro-controller would allow the change of the number of medications needed to take throughout the day. It will still work as we planned the circuitry to work. Once the count on each button is at the assigned number, the LED light will change from red to green; this will represent that the person has taken their medication for the day. Then when all the green LEDs are turned on, the blue LED light will turn on; this represents that the pill box needs to be refilled for the following week. Lastly, there is a reset button at the end of the pill box for the user to press. This will return all the count numbers to 0 in order to start the program all over again.
