Smart button for tracking meds?

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1

My grandparents are in their 90s, and lately, they’ve had trouble remembering when they’ve taken their medication. This became more problematic recently when my grandmother broke her ankle, and they need to track when she takes pain medication. My parents and my aunt are trying to track it with a pad and paper, but that has been unreliable. I think there could be a way to install a smart button in their medicine cabinet that they press whenever they take their meds, even if it’s only used when my grandmother takes her pain medication.

So I’m looking for a solution that fits the following criteria:

  1. Simple push button with internet connectivity, single press is fine, dual function preferred, but not more.
  2. They have a Google Assistant already, so that could be integrated.
  3. Could integrate with an online log that my aunt and parents could check.
  4. They have iPhones, but integrating that into the workflow is NOT a good idea. (However, using an app for setup is fine, of course. My dad could set up everything fine for them, but they couldn’t use it for the regular tracking.)
  5. Cost isn’t a major concern, but spending $200 for a button, hub, etc is probably not going to happen.

Any ideas?

2

Particle Photon Internet button or roll your own with any button you like and wire it up to the GPIO pins on a Raspberry Pi of your choice and a bit of Python to turn the button press into an online update.

3

I did try the Eve button to get it working with shortcuts to log date/time into a file, but Homekit can’t access my Shortcuts. But one of the small Raspberry Pi, as sylumer suggested should work fine. The Zero W comes with WiFi and Bluetooth.

4

There is a product called Timer Cap which is a pill-bottle with a timer in the cap (hence the name) which shows how long it has been since the bottle was opened.

I haven’t used it myself, but it seems like a good possibility.

Good luck.

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5

You can get a Logitech Pop button for around $70. It integrates with IFTTT so you can have a recipe that logs to a Google sheet/Airtable/Text File/etc every time it’s pushed.

6

Thanks everyone for your input. I think the Logitech Pop is exactly the solution I was looking for, although the Timer Cap is a good idea too. I think we can figure it out with this. Thanks.