Case Studies

Managing a daily medication routine sounds simple until you're actually doing it. Three separate meal windows. Multiple medications per window. Insulin that requires an exact unit count every single time. A missed dose isn't just an inconvenience — for someone managing Type 2 diabetes, it has real, compounding health consequences.

Phone alarms get snoozed. Phones get ignored. Generic solutions don't understand insulin dosing — a specific number of units must be injected each window, and that number needs to be recorded, not just acknowledged.

A phone is a distraction machine. It has notifications, social media, browser tabs, and a hundred other things competing for attention. A dedicated device has exactly one job. When you wake up in the morning and look at the nightstand, it shows you exactly what you need to see — no way to accidentally swipe away.

That single-purpose focus isn't a limitation — it's the entire product.

The device runs on an ESP32-2432S028R — a compact all-in-one board with a 320×240 resistive touchscreen, dual-core processor, and built-in WiFi. The entire system — UI, logic, web server, weather data, medication logging — runs on a chip smaller than a credit card.

Breakfast runs 5am–noon. Lunch noon–3pm. Dinner 5pm–midnight. Outside windows, a clean clock shows time, date, and live weather via OpenWeatherMap. The display is always useful, even when no medications are due.

For insulin, tapping the card opens a custom numpad — enter the exact units, confirm, and it's timestamped. Every medication also has a Skip button. Skipped doses are recorded separately from missed doses, because the distinction matters clinically.

Open any browser on the home network — full dashboard, no app install, no cloud, works entirely local. Today's summary, seven-day trend graphs, and a complete timestamped history log of every dose ever recorded.

Most people rely on visual inspection or taste to judge whether water is safe to drink. Neither method detects dissolved contaminants. In rural areas, remote regions, and even developed communities with aging infrastructure, water quality can vary significantly — and individuals typically have no practical way to assess it in real time.

Existing solutions are either lab-grade (expensive, slow, not portable) or passive (generic strips with no digital output). There was a clear gap for a device that gives immediate, understandable feedback in the field — no specialized knowledge required.

Søren was chosen deliberately — a human-centered name to give the project identity beyond a typical technical prototype. It reflects a shift from viewing this as just a sensor system to positioning it as a purposeful product focused on real-world impact. Good hardware deserves a name, not just a part number.

Every component was selected for portability, accessibility, and ease of replication. The entire device runs on a standard USB power bank — no wall outlet, no wires, no setup.

The TDS sensor reads dissolved solids in real time. Raw ADC values are processed through a smoothing algorithm to reduce noise, then converted to parts-per-million (ppm) using a temperature-compensated formula. This conversion is critical — raw voltage readings are meaningless without it.

The ppm value is classified against established safe drinking water thresholds. Instead of showing a technical number, the OLED outputs a direct, human-readable verdict.

Søren demonstrates what modern AI-assisted development looks like in practice. This wasn't AI generating a finished product — it was AI acting as a collaborative engineering tool that compressed the development timeline dramatically.

The conductivity-to-TDS conversion and temperature compensation logic — normally requiring days of research and debugging — was completed within hours using AI-guided code generation. The same approach was applied to ADC inconsistencies, signal smoothing, and overall system architecture.

Access to safe drinking water remains a critical issue in many parts of the world — including rural and remote communities in Canada. Søren addresses this with a portable solution that delivers immediate feedback without requiring specialized knowledge or equipment.