Technical+Electrical design to drain a pill from a container

[bhl777]

Hi All,

I have a question on a project and want to know what can be a solution for it.

Context:
I have a container and can pour a lot of tablet pills into it. All of these pills have the same size. But every time the poured pills may have different sizes. For example, on Day X I pour a lot of pill type 1 into the container, and each pill has a size A.


Requirement:
I want to have a way to drain out the pill, one at a time. For example, if there is a button, I can press the button to get the pill.

Question:
I assume this will need both mechanical and electrical components. How can I achieve the following targets when I press the button?
1. Only one pill will come out no matter what size of the pill is
2. there is no chance more than one pill can come out.

Thank you!

 

[d123]

Hi,

That looks hard to make 100% repeatable for one pill only.

Crude idea: a stepper motor or servo motor to operate the pill aperture when the button is pressed. A three-position rotary switch or slide switch to select pill size to decide how far aperture opens.

I wonder if this kind of thing may be more reliable with a carousel to hold pills in individual slots and for the aperture a hole in the container they fall through.

Maybe some way of defining weight to prevent more than one pill being released?

 

[BradtheRad]

I picture a hole at the bottom of the bin, large enough for the largest pill when a sliding cover permits.
Below is a cup to contain the smallest pill, yet the largest pill can sit on the top edge.
The cup is too small to contain two pills.

The cup is held up on a pedestal or a wire. A clear cup allows you to detect optically whether the cup contains a pill.

If you create the right clearances, only one pill drops through the hole, then the cover returns into place. If a second pill drops, it falls off the pedestal. leaving only one pill in the cup.