Medicine timer project
I have a real life problem that I think could be solved with Arduino. I have never build anything with circuits or microprocessors. (I tend to deal with the software side of computing.)
I am suppose to take my medication every morning. Some mornings, I'm on my way to work, and I can't remember if I've taken my medication or not. To solve this, I want to build a simple device. I think this device only needs four or five things
- A force-sensor
- A green light that is either on or off
- (optional)A red light that is either on or off
- A processor capable of keeping time (even if that means just counting ticks predictably)
- Power
I would keep my bottle of medicine on the force-sensor. In the morning, I would pick the bottle up, take a pill, then place it back on the force-sensor. This would turn the green light off and the red light on. After 20 hours (or, preferably, when it is the next day), the green light would turn on and the red light would turn off.
Therefore, if I wasn't sure if I took my medication, all I would have to do is look for a green light when I get home. If I see a green light, that means I forgot to take my medicine in the morning, so I should take it now. If it's red, then I already took my medicine today (or, at least within the last 20 hours).
My Questions
- Can I build this?
- Roughly, how much would it cost?
After a bit of googling, I am thinking about buying this force-sensor: Square Force-Sensitive Resistor (FSR) - Interlink 406
I cannot figure out where to buy 1 green LED light. I did find an Arduino T010113, but it seems really expensive and overly complicated for what I need.
For the processor, I would get the Arduino / Genuino UNO, but it seems like way more computing power than I need.
I'm not sure how to power it. From Arduino Playground, it looks like I just need to find a power plug that looks like this. I might have one laying around somewhere.
I'm assuming I would need 5 wires and 2 resistors (or 8 wires and 3 resistors if I had both a red and green light). I don't know what wires/resistors I need or how to put them together, but I bet I could figure that out. Where could I buy these?
From what I understand, once I have an Arduino, I would download the IDE, program my medicine timer, and somehow upload this to the device where it would live. I would plug in the thing into the wall, put my medicine botton on it, and that is that. What am I missing? (probably a whole, whole lot!) Is there a simpler/cheaper solution?