Automated iButton Placement Device

iButtons are flat metal disks with identifying information burned onto them. They are placed on sealed manufactured products for traceability and anticounterfeit purposes. iButtons are first placed onto sticky pads, which are then peeled and placed on products. This process is currently manual and requires roughly 2,000 hours of labor per year. A device was designed that automatically adheres iButtons to sticky pads for eventual placement onto a sealed product. This was accomplished with mostly 3D custom-printed parts in combination with motors and a Raspberry Pi. The device has a capacity of 3,000 iButtons and one roll of 3,000 sticky pads. It produces strips of iButtons adhered to sticky pads cut into a user-defined length. The number of moving parts was minimized to eliminate as many failure points, and thus device shutdowns, as possible. The machine designed uses a camera module with OpenCV to detect the outline of a sticky pad. Once the outline is detected, the coordinates of its center are used to determine how far the sticky pad needs to travel before it is at the correct location for iButton placement. A signal light attached to the top of the device indicates if the machine needs refilling or if there is an error in the system. A graphical user interface on an LCD screen displays refill alerts and allows users to start and stop the machine and define output length. The system was verified and tested under conditions similar to the operating environment and a user’s manual was provided for reference.