While week 1 was focused primarily on learning the basics behind all of the technology that I would be using, it is now time to determine how all of this technology will interface with the insulin pump that I am trying to create. I realize now that some of the concepts that I talked about in my previous week’s post can be confusing and hard to understand. I will include links to explain 3D printing here, and microcontrollers here, and go into detail on how these technologies work.
3D Printing
3D printing technology has been around for nearly 30 years. There are two main types of 3D printing, stereolithography and fused deposition modeling, and I will be using both in my project. Stereolithography was the first of the two to be created. Stereolithography works through photopolymerization of a resin that is held in a small tank. Basically what this means is that light is projected into the resin, causing the resin to link together on a molecular scale layer-by-layer. The other type of 3D printing that has gained a lot of attention lately is fused deposition modeling. This form of 3D printing works by heating up a filament (in most consumer products the printers use some form of plastic), and pushing it through a nozzle that is controlled via motors in the desired area. This technology also works layer-by-layer and builds the end product from the “ground up”.
Micro Controllers
Micro controllers allow the user endless opportunities in the world of computing. A micro controller basically works as a mini computer to do whatever job the user programs it to do. Today there are two main micro processors, the Arduino and the Raspberry Pi. Last week I discussed how I was getting the Arduino to do a few basic commands, however, I have found that for my project, the Raspberry Pi will work better than the Arduino. My knowledge on micro controllers is still limited, so for now I will leave it to the links above to explain in better detail.
Week 2 – Day 1
On the first day of week 2 I decided that I wanted to be able to hook an LCD display up to the Arduino and get it to show a message that the user inputs. Using a few online tutorials I was able to get the LCD to display two lines of a message that the user types, and I was even able to get the message to scroll across the screen. This experiment was primarily to work on how I wanted the display of the pump to read.
Day 2 and 3
Over these two days I was mainly doing research into how I can get a glucometer (the device that measures one’s blood sugar) to interface with a micro controller since I would be using the micro controller as the brains of the pump. I came across a webpage that explained a cloud based program that allows the user to store their glucose numbers in the cloud. The project is called night scout and it may be the answer to the problem. The night scout allows the user to send the information from their glucose sensors to a variety of devices and then store the numbers in the cloud. The important part however, is that people have been able to then take the numbers from the cloud and display them using raspberry pi. If I am able to set up the night scout with the raspberry pi, I could make insulin calculations based upon the numbers from that and also have the pump interface with other technology (like phones, smart watches, etc.). The night scout platform is a promising way to solve a major issue in the project.
Day 3 and 4
Thursday and Friday of this week were spent experimenting with the raspberry pi and trying to determine its capabilities. My main goal for these two days was to program the raspberry pi to cycle a stepper motor at a specific speed. Using python I was able to program the raspberry pi to control a stepper motor’s speed based off of an integer input. The stepper motor did cycle, however, I believe that there are some bugs that I need to sort out in order to have the motor function with more precision.
