Another concept involves tubes loaded with pills.

If a pharmacy were to build their own home pill dispenser, tube "cartridges" would probably be the best method for dispensing. The cartridges would be a standard size, but the internal diameter and dispensing mechanism would be tailored for the pills. Each cartridge could come with an NFC tag containing dosing instructions.

Unfortunately, we have to deal will arbitrary pill sizes and load the tubes ourselves. The concept has a place to add pills, and mechanism to auto-load tubes, and a dispensing mechanism.

The tubes would have to match the individual pill diameters. Several dispensing plates of different thicknesses could be added to the bottom, allowing a carousel to rotate the correct tube and dispense one pill at a time.

Below are concept renderings of the mechanism.

And here is a quick video of the dispensing mechanism. There is a rotating cam with a spring loaded following pin. The cam rotates one direction to select the correct dispensing plate, then rotates the other direction to dispense a pill.

Pros:

• (Hopefully) easy to load
• High density storage
• Easy to clean tubes

Cons:

• Tubes need to be changed out for each pill type
• Loading pills and dispensing might be inconsistent

Things that aren't quite figured out yet:

• Exact dispensing mechanism
• Exact pill loading method