This DIY Smart Pill Dispenser Ensures That You’re Getting the Right Dosage of Drugs

Anyone who needs to take regular maintenance drugs knows that it get be difficult to remember to take them each day — or even if you’ve already taken them that day or not. That’s even truer if you’re taking prescription drugs that are taken on an unusual schedule, such as on alternating days or once a week. In that case, the standard daily pill containers do very little good. You’re most likely stuck setting a reminder on your phone — a solution that fails if you don’t have access to your medication when the alarm goes off. That’s why Danielle Guli Morad and Dekel Binyamin built this Smart Pill Dispenser that can eject pills and much more.

Guli Morad and Binyamin designed the Smart Pill Dispenser for a university IoT course and with the elderly in mind, but it would be useful for anyone who has trouble remembering to take their medication. The prototype that they built can dispense two different kinds of pills, but it could easily be adapted to handle many more. It’s most basic function is to feed those pills from their individual hoppers according to a set schedule. It can also send you a notification when it’s time to take a pill, and even send a family member a notification if you don’t take your medication within a set amount of time. That last feature would be particularly useful for people living with Alzheimer’s disease or dementia.

The Smart Pill Dispenser is controlled by an ESP8266 board. The Instructables tutorial calls for an Arduino Uno in addition to the ESP8266 board, but that’s only used to provide power to one of the large servos (something that can be done directly). A total of four servos are used: two to ready the pills in the hopper and two to drop them into the collection bin. That collection bin is monitored by a reed switch, so the system knows when it has been opened. The ESP8266 board communicates via the Mosquitto MQTT service with a Node-RED server running on a separate computer, which is used to set the schedule. A Telegram service handles the notifications. The mechanical components can be constructed using typical hobby supplies, though the project would certainly benefit from some 3D-printed parts.