Patent ID: 8386275

Claim:
A pill dispensing device comprising: a temporary storage compartment adapted to store one or more pills; a feeding assembly including a singulator, the feeding assembly being coupled to the temporary storage compartment and adapted to move and stop the one or more pills; a dispensing route operatively coupled to an exit position of the feeding assembly and disposed to receive the one or more pills; a plurality of optical sensors, each optical sensor being adapted to produce a light beam and indicate a count signal for each of the one or more pills that disrupt the light beam, the light beam being disposed within a portion of the dispensing route; a controller coupled to the feeding assembly and the plurality of optical sensors; a housing enclosing at least the feeding assembly, the portion of the dispensing route, and the plurality of optical sensors; a filtration assembly configured to remove air and particulate matter from an interior cavity of the housing; and wherein: the controller is programmable with a specific number of sensor mismatches; the controller is configured to receive count signals from each of the plurality of optical sensors, the count signal indicating that a pill has disrupted the light beam; the controller is configured to generate an abort count sensor mismatch indication when the number of pills counted by at least one of the plurality of optical sensors is different than the number of pills counted by another of the plurality of optical sensors by the specific number; the controller is configured to send a stop instruction to the feeding assembly based on the abort count sensor mismatch indication; and the feeding assembly is adapted to stop moving the one or more pills upon receiving the stop instruction from the controller.