The aptly named Autosyringe slowly pushes a syringe in order to deliver a measured dose of medicine or nutrients at a steady rate. Ellie is currently using two autosyringes. One delivers her lipids and (as of 11:00 AM today) one delivers her 8 mL of mommy's milk every three hours. (A new syringe has to be loaded every three hours.)
From an Electrical Engineering perspective the autosyringe is an interesting control system. A simple version of an autosyringe would make a great class project for some young, budding Electrical Engineering student.
For those want to know, here is how the device most likely works. (Translation: this is how I would build one.) A microcontroller could be used to control a stepper motor. As stepper motor is just a type of motor that makes it easy to control the speed of rotation. The stepper motor would drive the arm that pushes in the syringe. For a user interface a keypad (or any collection of buttons) and an lcd display would form the user interface. The nurse would use these to input the amount of fluid in the syringe and the time period over which to deliver it. This information would be sent to the microcontroller which would then calculate the rate at which it would need to drive the stepper motor.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Tech Spotlight: Autosyringe
The aptly named Autosyringe slowly pushes a syringe in order to deliver a measured dose of medicine or nutrients at a steady rate. Ellie is currently using two autosyringes. One delivers her lipids and (as of 11:00 AM today) one delivers her 8 mL of mommy's milk every three hours. (A new syringe has to be loaded every three hours.)
From an Electrical Engineering perspective the autosyringe is an interesting control system. A simple version of an autosyringe would make a great class project for some young, budding Electrical Engineering student.
For those want to know, here is how the device most likely works. (Translation: this is how I would build one.) A microcontroller could be used to control a stepper motor. As stepper motor is just a type of motor that makes it easy to control the speed of rotation. The stepper motor would drive the arm that pushes in the syringe. For a user interface a keypad (or any collection of buttons) and an lcd display would form the user interface. The nurse would use these to input the amount of fluid in the syringe and the time period over which to deliver it. This information would be sent to the microcontroller which would then calculate the rate at which it would need to drive the stepper motor.
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Hi team gramkow...glad you're all back together again...be sure to tell grandma bea hello from me...sounds like ellie is starting to train for the future olympics...what with rolling over at age 2 weeks...so many things for her to learn...i love the pictures and daily updates...it's amazing how much hair she already has...i think she looks like her daddy...but time will tell...i didn't meet mandy until she was about 9 months old...and i'm a tad older now so don't really remember how she looked...but know she looked like a weber!!! blessings on your day...lovingly, connie
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