The Pill Project at Very Little Cost.

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This project started with my wife going into the hospital. She put my pill in baggies for each day. I had one bag left so that meant that I was going to have to learn the pill game fast. You see below the finish product.

1. Drill
2. Drill bits - One the size of the small wire and one for the bigger size.
3. Vise Grips - This works really good for cutting the wire.
4. Vise - To hold the wire when twisting it.
5. Safety Glasses - You never can tell when something might fly into your eyes.
6. Measuring tape - Just in case.
7. Marker - To mark the location for the holes that you are going to drill
8. # 9 wire
9. Tie Wire.
10. Masking Tape - I can't do anything without it.
11. Tray - I used on hand that I used.
12. Gloves - These might come in handy when working with the wire.

I do not recommend doing this project the way I did. What I do recommend is to go to a welding shop or other places where they sell welding rod. They have the small and the large rod that a person could use. A person could buy it at a reasonable price.

Now if you want to do it the way that I did, I will not be responsible for any damage that you might cause to yourself or to any of your equipment.

Step # 1. First I had to find out just what I was taking and how many. My wife had the pills marked on the baggies with morning and night. So I ended up removing the pills from the morning bag and I tried to line them up so that I could take a picture of them. This I did without any luck. My next thought was maybe I could use a piece of duct tape. I turned up both ends of the tape so that it would stick down on the breadboard. I made another piece of tape with the numbers 1 through 12 as you can see in the picture below.

Step # 2. This step, I had to find out just what each of the pills was. This meant going through each bottle and finding the information that I needed. As I found a match, I would put a number and name on the lid. Like M1, M2 and N1, N2 until I was able to put a name to each pill.

Step # 3. My next step was to try to find out how many cells I would need to put the pills in. I looked around outside and found a tray that I had used on another project sometime earlier. I said to myself, now that looks like a pretty good start. The next thing that I found was a roll of #9 wire. This is really heavy wire. The next thing was to straighten it out enough so that it would do what I was planning on doing. To do that I needed to get out my vice so that I could hold it on one end and then I used my drill to twist the wire to make it stiff. I did the same thing with some tie wire.

Step # 4. This step, I marked the holes that I was going to drill in the tray for the wires to make the cells. I knew that I was going to need 24 cells for the pills that I was going to put them in. First I started with the long direction of the tray. I need 3 wires that direction to make 4 rolls of cells. I measured the length and it was 15 inches. I made the length of the wires 16 inches so that they would stick out a little on both ends. Once I had one of the wires in, I took some of the duct tape and taped down the wire so that it wouldn't move around.

Step # 5. Now for the next part, I took the tie wire that I had straightened and made pieces that were longer then the height of the tray. I needed 5 pieces tie wire to make the cells. I measured again so that I could drill the holes that I needed both at the top and the bottom of the tray or from one side to the other side, however you look at it. I tried to feed the tie wire under the tape and the #9 wire without any luck. I found the best way was to cut the tape on both side of the #9 wire and then I was able to feed the wire across the tray under all 3 of the #9 wires. I folded all the wires over so that they would not stick out. I put masking tape over all the wires around all the outside edges. This made it very safe when using the tray.

Step # 6 To make the cells the same height. I had to cut pieces # 9 fence wire the width of each cell. I placed the strips of # 9 wire close to the tie wire that I had running the width of the tray. I put masking tape on those to hold them down too. This finished that part of the project.

Step # 7. The last step of making the tray was the numbering. The first 2 rows were for the morning pills. I put M1 through M12. For the next two rows of cells, I put N1 through N12. Now for the fun part, dump a pile of pills in each of the cells with the number that is on the bottle. You can see on the finished tray that I had a couple slots left. Probably won't be too long and I will be filling them too.

Step # 8 This last step was to read the instructions on the bottle and make sure that I was putting the right amount of pills in each bag. For me the next part was to find someone with small enough fingers and good enough nerves to be able to pick up the pills and put them in the baggies. At my age the little pills want to jump around.

Step # 9. In closing, if I would have had more time, I would probably have glued the strips down with hot glue but it works really well the way it is and my daughter said that it was really fun. Especially, when we had all the pills in the tray and it way lying on the couch next to where I sit. I flopped down and the pills went everywhere. I am like a bull in a China Closet. One nice thing was that I had taken a picture of it and we could see on the computer where each of the pills went.

You might think that I am taking a bunch of pills. A couple of the pills are memory pills so that I can remember to take the rest of them. (You might say that my wife left me holding the bag.)

By the way, my wife is home now and doing fine. She even says that she is going to use this when she does the pills from now on. Chuck