AUTOMATIC MEDICINAL DOSING DEVICE

Author: VITO STIPANOVIĆ

Menthor: GORAN ECIMOVIĆ

Company/Faculty/School: I.TEHNIČKA ŠKOLA – TESLA, Zagreb

Country: Croatia

e-mail: goran.ecko@gmail.com

Take therapy in pill form at a certain time, day by day, with all the effort we sometimes forget! With some medications, such situations can have serious consequences. The elderly population and especially those suffering from dementia, are unable to perform this task on their own.

With this device, the person taking care of the therapy once a week prepares the correct doses and the necessary medications will be ready for consumption in the container at the right time. The device is intended for personal use, retirement homes, health care facilities…

The device is based on the ATMEGA 16 microcontroller. The rotation of the drum is realized by using a STEP motor with an independent driver module, and four mini servo motors are used to open the test tubes with tablets. The exact position of the drum for the current day was solved with a four-bit optocoupler. The real time module is the DS2313 which contains the exact time and calendar of exceptional precision. A 3V lithium battery is used to buck up the power supply of the RTC module, which enables operation of the clock for one year, provided that there is no external power source (important information in case of storage of the device). The DF player is selected for the sound circuit, and the required messages are stored on the micro SD card. By changing the SD card, it is possible to select any speech area of the user. The power supply of the device is solved with two Liion batteries 18650, in case of power failure the device is autonomous for at least ten days. A standard 12V 500mA adapter is used to charge the batteries. For the display of required information a 4×20 LCD with I2C communication is used. The housing is made of transparent plexiglass for easier demonstration of work, and was cut using a laser.