Project

# Title Team Members TA Documents Sponsor
66 Automatic pill dispenser
Qingyu Li
Shengyu Ge
Wennan Zhai
Chi Zhang design_document1.pdf
design_document2.pdf
design_document3.pdf
design_document4.pdf
design_document5.pdf
design_document8.pdf
design_document9.pdf
design_document10.pdf
design_document11.pdf
design_document12.pdf
final_paper1.pdf
proposal2.pdf
proposal1.pdf
**This project is pitched by Jinal Shah.**

Team: Qingyu Li (qingyul2), Wennan Zhai (wennanz2), Shengyu Ge(shengyu3)

# PROBLEM
Taking medications as instructed and punctually can be a hard task for patients who need many kinds of pills, especially for senior people with memory problems. Given the number of different types of medicine, it is often difficult and troublesome for the patients to keep track of the correct dose and consumption time for each medicine. It is also very common that many old people need reminders or notifications to remind them of taking the pills. Smartphone alarms can be helpful in this situation but many people don’t use or are not good at smartphones.

# SOLUTION OVERVIEW
We want to design an automatic pill dispenser that can alert the user to take medicine on time and automatically dispense the correct type and dose of the pills. It will also show the instructions for those pills on a screen. To make the dispenser user-friendly, we plan to develop a mobile application for registering/keeping the information of the medicines and setting dose and time. It can also set off alarms at the set time. Ideally, there will be different profiles for different users for easier family usage.
The dispenser will work in the following steps:
1. The user puts different types of pills into unique containers in the dispenser and registers the medicine information such as pill name, dose and time to take, expiration date, etc. in the mobile app.
2. The dispenser will keep track of time (with a real-time clock) and medical information. At the set time, it will automatically choose the correct types and numbers of pills via the instructions previously set, put them into the tray and display the instructions on the screen. An alarm will set off both at the dispenser and on the phone/smart home devices.
3. At other situations such as medicine expired or needs a refill, the dispenser will display a notification and alert the users on their phones.

# SOLUTION COMPONENTS
- Subsystem1: Mechanical system

The mechanical system will be designed by a Mechanical engineering senior design team and the dispenser itself would include motors and gears for dispensing pills. This mechanical system will eventually be integrated with the software and hardware we develop to perform the functionality.

- Subsystem2: Electrical dispenser control/notification system

The control system will be responsible for choosing correct containers/pill numbers, displaying notifications and generating correct signals for the mechanical system. The dispenser is designed to be used at home not portable so an external ac/dc adapter will suffice.

- Subsystem3: Bluetooth/WIFI connection system

There will be a Bluetooth/WIFI module inside the dispenser that can communicate with the mobile app.

- Subsystem4: Mobile app

The mobile app should be simple and easy to use. It needs to properly connect and send medicine information to the dispenser after the user setup. Will add Alexa/Google Home support if possible.

# CRITERION FOR SUCCESS
It will dispense the right pills at the right time via the instructions set by users.

Notifications and instructions will show up on the screen and mobile app.

Assistive Chessboard

Robert Kaufman, Rushi Patel, William Sun

Assistive Chessboard

Featured Project

Problem: It can be difficult for a new player to learn chess, especially if they have no one to play with. They would have to resort to online guides which can be distracting when playing with a real board. If they have no one to play with, they would again have to resort to online games which just don't have the same feel as real boards.

Proposal: We plan to create an assistive chess board. The board will have the following features:

-The board will be able to suggest a move by lighting up the square of the move-to space and square under the piece to move.

-The board will light up valid moves when a piece is picked up and flash the placed square if it is invalid.

-We will include a chess clock for timed play with stop buttons for players to signal the end of their turn.

-The player(s) will be able to select different standard time set-ups and preferences for the help displayed by the board.

Implementation Details: The board lights will be an RGB LED under each square of the board. Each chess piece will have a magnetic base which can be detected by a magnetic field sensor under each square. Each piece will have a different strength magnet inside it to ID which piece is what (ie. 6 different magnet sizes for the 6 different types of pieces). Black and white pieces will be distinguished by the polarity of the magnets. The strength and polarity will be read by the same magnetic field sensor under each square. The lights will have different colors for the different piece that it is representing as well as for different signals (ie. An invalid move will flash red).

The chess clock will consist of a 7-segment display in the form of (h:mm:ss) and there will be 2 stop buttons, one for each side, to signal when a player’s turn is over. A third button will be featured near the clock to act as a reset button. The combination of the two stop switches and reset button will be used to select the time mode for the clock. Each side of the board will also have a two toggle-able buttons or switches to control whether move help or suggested moves should be enabled on that side of the board. The state of the decision will be shown by a lit or unlit LED light near the relevant switch.

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