LocationsCOVID-19 Open-Source Innovation: Ecofill
The COVID-19 Detect and Protect Challenge is crowdsourcing open-source hardware innovations to tackle the disease. Every one of the 300+ innovations submitted is made freely available, with all instructions needed for others to build them. Here, we talk to Grand Prize Winner Danica Fernandez behind the Ecofill vending machine.
Tell us about your solution. How does it address a specific need around COVID-19 response/recovery?
Ecofill is a vending machine that dispenses cleaning products such as antibacterial gel and hand sanitisers. Users can refill their empty bottles with more product, reducing plastic waste and at a lower price. It can dispense precise amounts of the selected product, is connected to the cloud for easier configuration, and can save a detailed sale log, among other functions.
Due to the recent COVID-19 pandemic it may be useful for providing antibacterial gel and other sanitisers 24/7 to people without the need of human contact. Also it can be used to regulate demand of these items, so everybody should be able to obtain their cleaning products.
What was the inspiration behind the project?
For a long time I have been building hardware and software for vending machines and I noticed how they help people to obtain supplies at all times in a quick and easy way. No matter if it is very late on a weekend.
When the items began to be sold out and the stores started to be temporally closed due to COVID-19 restrictions I came up with the idea of providing the required supplies such as sanitisers, antibacterial gel and general cleaning products in a vending machine. This way they will be available all the time, no matter if the store is closed.
What’s more, the amount that is dispensed could be regulated, so there is enough for everyone, and small businesses would be able to keep their sales and avoid bankruptcy. Also is perfectly safe for both sides, customers and employees, because it does not require direct human contact. At the same time it is an eco-friendly solution because you simply need to bring your own bottle, so it even helps to reduce waste.
Why do you think open-source is so important in responding to COVID-19?
I think that open source is very important in a situation like this because it allows us to share, improve and replicate solutions quicker. Also it makes the resource accessible to anyone everywhere and usually at lower cost. So a lot of people can benefit when the community is involved, and work together to achieve a goal. It also allows us to deal with supply chain issues and response times, because these solutions can be built in the required place with already available components and tools.
What is the impact you hope to achieve with this solution?
I hope that this could be used by everyone as a starting point for building their own machines, especially for small businesses. So they can benefit from this and at the same time, help me to improve the system and increase the capabilities of this project. I am excited to see what people can do with it, and if even a big company could be interested in a concept like this. At the moment I am already working on making a full-scale machine ready to be deployed in the field, and see how it goes.
What is one solution in the #COVID19DetectProtect challenge that you wish you'd built and why?
I wish I had built a real time disease monitor. Just imagine what would happen if we were able to recognise and track a disease in real time around the globe. We could take immediate action to stop the propagation as soon as it starts and avoid further negative side effects. At the same time that we can be able to get detailed medical data from the people, how the disease affects the human body and which treatments are effective against it.
I think that this is becoming possible, just think about it. Today, more and more people are wearing fitness tracking devices capable of analysing vital signs, biometric data and activity records. If we were able to process and analyse that data we should be able to detect an illness and take action before it turns into a bigger problem.
About Danica Fernandez: Danica Arlene Fernandez Raygoza is a mechatronics engineer who likes to make robots, programmes and get messy with electronics. Lover of embedded systems and PCB design. Since she was a child she has always liked discovering how things work, as well as creating them. Danica likes to keep up to date of the latest technology developments and to experiment with new things. Founder and main engineer at 2BRobots (www.2brobots.com)