The last log details a tall, skinny, cascading storage system. This concept is a fat, short system that does not cascade. Each pill type is stored on a different level (in a veined carousel), with a shared shaft to add/remove pills. Unfortunately, this adds complexity, with a "shuttle" to access different levels (for adding pills) and possibly a second shuttle to rotate individual levels.

I was also toying with the idea of a shake conveyor, in this case vibrating a piece of sloped angle aluminum. Below are some renderings.

If I can control the orientation of the pills, I can make the containers more efficient. In this case, I made them about 1"x0.5"x0.5". In a 12" cube I'm fitting 500 containers. I was also experimenting with an idea to get the pill delivery shuttle out of the shaft at it's lowest position.

Pros:

• (Hopefully) easy to load
• High density storage
• Somewhat universal system (no changing parts)

Cons:

• Complex (with tight mechanical tolerances)
• Loading pills and dispensing will be slow

Things that aren't quite figured out yet:

• Loading
• Sensor locations