On May 4, 2015 from 3:05 – 3:59, Sarah and I opened up the feminine hygiene dispenser that we had bought from eBay.
Below are my (Kiley’s) listed notes as we unlocked the dispenser and examined the mechanisms inside:
– Sarah takes pics of outside
– Use key to unlock it
– The directions on the inside are in English AND Spanish. This seems interesting/pertinent but ultimately not surprising.
– The second set of directions on the inside of the dispenser aren’t very good because there aren’t any pictures.
– There is a crunched up yellow something at the bottom.
– We got it out (it was taped accidentally down there so it took a while), and it seems to be the same instructions as the set of directions on the inside but with pictures.
– We unlocked the coin compartment and there were 4 screws. We think that they are for hanging up the dispenser.
– We thought that there was only one set of the weights, but both of them were just on one side. The pictures on the door of the directions make it clear which went where.
– Nevermind, the directions did not make it clear which went where because I tried to put it in opposite. I feel stupid now because it’s obvious that one is wider than the other and one column is wider than the other!
– Figured out how to spin the red lever things all the way around, clockwise. I didn’t know why they would need to go down all the way, but Sarah pointed out that it’s because it’s how the tampons and pads are dispensed. That makes sense now.
– The pins are kind of difficult to spin and hurt our fingers while we were spinning them.
– We simulated a non-empty and empty dispenser to see what happens with the weight and when you try to turn the lever. As expected, the weight gets in the way of the lever so it’s unable to turn when the dispenser is empty.
– We are missing the levers for spinning (after you put the coins) from the outside and the red flags that say empty. This is the coin mechanism that the instructions on the inside and the crumpled up yellow sheet of paper are about.
– I think there are a couple ways of going about alerting when the dispenser is empty or close to empty. I assume we’d want to alert when it’s close to empty AND when it’s completely empty. Actually, we will want to say exactly how many are left in it.
– Since there is a standardized size for the machine and a standard set of tampons and pads that go into it, we can either:
(1) build a sensor that can sense how high up the products are and then does some math to say how many there are in it.
(2) build a machine that counts how many times the coin mechanism is turned with coins in it.
(3) build a machine that counts how much money has been put into it and senses which product was chosen.
– Besides the fact that we don’t have the coin mechanisms anyway, Sarah pointed out that (1) would probably be the best because it wouldn’t require any resetting by the person who refills the machines and so their jobs wouldn’t be changed.