Physical Product
VitDaily
The Vitdaily is a pill case that is small so that it can easily be brought anywhere one goes. And it was designed to look more aesthetic than traditional vitamin packaging.
It has six compartments. This number was chosen based on the number of various kinds of pills people like to take and thereby would be enough for a large part of our target group. It might seem that a smaller case would also be enough for a lot of people, but this way we encourage people to take more vitamins which might come in good if we start selling vitamins ourselves later on in our development.
The size of the compartments is chosen so that for a small form factor, the VitDaily can hold enough vitamins to last at least a week. The front of the device consists of an angled sliding door. This angle was chosen so that one can take out a pill without having to use multiple fingers. Now they can just use one finger to slide out the number of pills they need from each separate slot, making it more ergonomic than standard pill containers.
The slots are numbered one through six. This is done so that the user can take the pills easily based on the notification in their app. We chose to use numbers as identifiers for the slots as a lot of vitamins use letters as identifiers, and if, for example, vitamin B is in slot C, that might get confusing quickly. The case can be made that if one needs to take 2 pills from slot 3 that might also bring confusion, but we expect that to be less.
The back of the VitDaily has a sliding door as well, but this cannot be opened by the user. It can only be opened as it is being interlocked with the VitHome for refilling. The reason for there being a separate door is so that the order of the vitamins in the VitHome and the VitDaily will have the same mapping, to eliminate confusion. This will make more sense when the function of the VitHome is explained.
The VitDaily does not require any power as it does not have electronics. In a later stage of development, a case could be designed that might include electronics to passively display or count the number of pills one needs to take from the case or to actively distribute the right variety and number of pills to the user.
VitHome
The VitHome is a home base that can be placed in a closet or on the kitchen counter, or anywhere where our customers would like to store their pills. Because it is one device carrying all pills one has in stock, it is a more aesthetically pleasing solution than having separate containers for each.
Just like the VitDaily it has 6 different slots that carry vitamins. These slots will carry the same vitamins and be in the same order as on the VitDaily.
The size of these slots was determined by the typical size of pill containers. When an order of new pills comes in, the user can empty that entire container into the corresponding slot on the VitHome. This can be done from the top of the device by removing the lid.
The Vithome can be connected to power with a power cable. This serves the electronics inside. These electronics consist of weight sensors to measure the number of vitamins in each separate slot, a light at the bottom of the device, a Wi-Fi module to wirelessly transfer data to and from the app, and a microcontroller to control everything.
When a slot is almost empty, the signal is sent from the VitHome to the app to order new ones. If the user sets this process to be automatic, the order will be done right away. If the user sets this process to be manual, they can receive a notification to order the pills themselves.
The bottom of the lid of the VitHome will contain a qr-code. This qr-code will lead to the downloading page of our app. The entire instruction manual for both devices will be in this app. This way, people will not have the problem of storing and possibly losing the instruction manual, but always have it on hand in the app that they need to use the product anyway.
3D model
See and experience how VitDaily can become a part of your life. The video shows how your VitDaily revolutionizes your daily routine and how it will integrate into your home.
A 3D print was made from our CAD models. It is not fully functional, but aesthetically, it corresponds to our design. This model gives a nice illustration of how our product will look and be handled.
We do think that the size of the VitHome should be increased slightly in comparison to our model and that the size of the VitDaily should be decreased slightly in comparison to our model. The reason for this is that the VitDaily still feels a bit bulky and the VitHome could easily have a lot more storage space as its size won’t matter that much while it resides in some storage place. Further research would be needed to determine the exact sizes before production.
A second, aesthetically incorrect, model was made to prove and show the workings from a mechanical point of view. In this model, you can really see the ease with which pills can be transferred.
Interface and mechanism
The front of the VitHome has an interface for the VitDaily with a lever that can be pushed down. When the VitDaily is interfaced with the VitHome, the backdoor of the VitDaily interlocks with the sliding lever of the VitHome. When the lever is pushed down, both doors open at the same time and the vitamins of each compartment have the chance to slide down into the corresponding compartments of the VitDaily, thereby refilling it. The VitDaily is locked to the Vithome during this process. After the VitDaily has been refilled, the spring-loaded lever will come back up, after which the VitDaily can be removed again.
The way that the two doors interlock is the following; Both doors have two spring-loaded pins that stick into them from out of the device through a thru-hole in the door. These pins work as a lock to make sure the lever of the VitHome and the backdoor of the VitDaily cannot be opened accidentally.
Both doors have these pins in separate locations. On the location where the opposite door has its locking pin, each door has an extrusion. When the two interface, these extrusions push the locking pins of the opposite door out through the thru-holes whilst inserting themselves into these holes. Thereby these two doors are free to slide up and down whilst being mutually interlocked.
By sliding down, the pills flow freely from the VitHome into the VitDaily. After that has happened, the spring-loaded door of the VitHome comes back up together with the backdoor of the VitDaily. Because the VitHome has an extrusion above/to the back of the interface, the surface level of the pills in the interface will naturally sit lower than the ceiling of the interface; there is some room above the pills. When the door closes and protrudes up through this surface level, the final pills have a chance to fall off from the door back into the VitHome, or forward into the VitDaily. This prevents them from getting stuck and allows the doors to fully shut.
After that, the VitDaily can be taken away again. This entire process can happen in around 5 seconds, thereby not being an obstruction to the routine of the customer.
Material & Manufacturing
Material Selection
Both the VitHome and VitDaily are manufactured from plastics through an injection molding process. When selecting a plastic for these products we had several requirements: recyclability, cleaning, low cost, and food safety. The plastic we will use is PP which we selected over the also appealing HPDE due to its superior recyclability. PP has the additional benefit of being more chemically resistant which could provide benefit with extending the product lifespan.
Manufacturing & Assembly
The objective of this initial version of the VitHome & VitDaily is to have a low-cost physical product that can be leveraged to achieve scale with minimal upfront cost and complexity. Each unit consists of 5 injection molded pieces, 6 load cells, a microcomputer, and several fastening & finishing components. This leads to a unit cost including assembly of around 21€.
Dimensions
The above figure includes the current dimensions of the prototype versions of the VitHome and VitDaily. However, these values will change as the Vithome will become deeper while the VitDaily will reduce in both depth and height.
The lifecycle
We live in a world with finite resources and there’s a need to be more sustainable and limit the impact on the ecosystem. Certain value-retaining parts such as the electronics could be re-used after inspection and maintenance and then reintroduced in the assembly. Due to food safety concerns, the internal plastic parts cannot be reused instead they could be partially recycled and re-introduced as a raw resource for the injection molding of new cases.
