Smart Contact Lens Dispenser Also Gives Weather Updates

When making, you’ll often find that one need or idea morphs into something much more awesome, as was the case with this contact dispenser by “MN Maker.” Originally, the device was envisioned as simply a place to store contacts that wasn’t just the box that they’re shipped in. The resulting 3D-printed design is available here, and the setup does a good job of keeping left and right contacts stowed until they’re dispensed — with a manual pull.

Eventually, however, MN Maker wasn’t satisfied with simply pulling the contacts out ever single time they were needed, and decided to automate the process instead. What he came up with uses continuous rotation micro “servos” to push on the bottom of each package, dispensing them out into an awaiting hand in a right then left sequence. The action is triggered with an infrared emitter/photodiode/and M358 amplifier, which passes presence data on to the controlling NodeMCU ESP8266 board.

To take advantage of the board’s WiFi capability — and experiment with a tiny 0.96” OLED screen — he also programmed the device to display the weather for the next few days. It would certainly make sense that you’d want to have this info available after having good eyesight restored in the morning.

Code and other build info can be found in the project’s write-up, and print files for the enhanced version are up on Thingiverse.