For my project, I plan on building a “smart” nicotine/caffeine patch. The general idea is to be able to have a patch receive information about what the user is doing and then administer the substance based on that information. This would allow people to control what they want to be interested in by allowing the user to receive energy at the ideal time.

For the actual model, I took inspiration from both existing nicotine patches and caffeine patches.

On 9/25, I talked a bit with Cayden Pierce, who has had experience building wearable devices in the past. We started by studying how existing nicotine patches work. We looked at the patent for the original nicotine patch, which can be found here: US4839174A Patent.

The way they work is by having a bunch of microneedles in the sticky part that goes on the skin. Nicotine is trapped in the top part of the patch and has a set rate of how quickly it is administered into the skin.

After this, we began looking at what an initial prototype framework would look like. We began thinking of a system that would take a bunch of screenshots of a computer or device, then have an algorithm that scores the “efficiency” of the tasks and determines the amount of the substance to deliver based on that.

However, we thought it would be even better to “close the loop” by adding another sensor that tracks the movements of someone's fingers based on the muscle movements in their wrist as demonstrated below.

Potentially pivoting

So after some reaserch into how molecules work, I realized that there is a trade off. Caffine and nicotine cannot be injected like insulin becuase it cannto be put right under the skin rather it has to enter transermally

It would either have to go into the body via a patch or with an IV right into the vein

As it stands I figure it would be pretty difficult for me to safley develop a way to inject myself with an IV. However it might be cool to try and find a way to automate IV injections

I will talk to some people to figure out the possibility of this

The path I think I should take is trying to do it via patch and instead of having it moitor movemnt on a daily basis, I will have it monitor movment more broadly since it takes 30 minutes to an hour for the substance to get through and hit

for a pump that can be used to deliver caffine/nicotine in precise quanitites I will need to use a micro pump and motor to deliver the substance

I have been looking at a couple various pumps one of which is below. Before I buy this I want to make sure that I can actually get it to work so I will try to make a bulkier prototype first.

Quick Update 10/30

I was able to get the desigins for a past nicotine pump developed by Chorno Thereaputics, which included how their patch technology works and the various assembly parts. If I do this I would have to use some kind of alchool substance instad of nicotine and alchool for saftey reasons.

The real innovation they used instead of an expensive pump was a small valve system that used springs to be able to get the prcise dosage which I thought was prrety interesting.

I am looking for a chem proffessor at harvard to try and help me with the nicotine/aclhool consentrate. I am still debating if it may be wiser to work on something else.

A different Idea: Master Key

I am thinking of combining a mechanical lock pick and making it electronic so that it can automatically unlock a door by just inserting it. There would be a motor that would turn the door and a different mechanism would make the gun part knock the pins a bunch

This would be combined with an RFID/NFC emittor and scanner, so I could read in any working ID and unlock doors that way

It could also be kind of James Bondy to add something that can pick up when someone scans into something with a long range scanner

Long Range RFID to find things/h1>

I would be interested in making a device that could be used in the construction feild so that it is easy for people to find things and track the progress of things. This would entail having a bunch of rfid tags and then having a long range rfid scanner with a GPS to track where items are. This could also monitor the progres being made on the site

A different Idea

Loading a gun magizine is a bit of a pain in the butt, so I think it would be intresting if I could make a attachment that pushes bullets in mechanically