Objective: To increase availability of menstrual hygiene products for women’s bathrooms, I designed a prototype vending machine for public restrooms! There is a lack of awareness regarding menstrual hygiene products in Bangladesh and the subsequent unavailability of these products in important public settings, especially on university campuses. I was hired to design and build a prototype vending machine for these sanitary products while a group of students built a burner to dispose of used pads by controlled incineration rather than in bins.

Approach: First, I built the wooden casing, and then installed two stepper  motors, mounted in a custom-made spring shaped carrier. Then, I used a microcontroller and motor driver to control the motors to drop off the products when a coin was inserted into a slot. I also designed a mechanism that uses LDR and a laser to detect coin input as the coin blocks the laser light to trigger the LDR sensor.