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Caloric Intake Management
System
Greg Gates
Enayat Qayumi
Project Definition
• The goal of this project is to design, build,
and test a system in which there is interface
between a food weighing scale and a
calculator, and between the calculator and a
computer in order to collect and store
caloric intake data for analysis.
Significance
• Bomb calorimetry
– tedious, time consuming, limits study to area
• Other methods, very inaccurate (20-45%)
• 220 active protocols, could be used in any energy
monitoring clinical trial
• NESSy similar & accurate, a little cumbersome
• This device
– Portable, keeps long-term data for improved accuracy,
digital scale for improved accuracy, convenient, user
friendly
Background & Planning
• Last year, students never actually designed anything,
couldn’t connect components, write working program, or
write database
• TI 86 chosen do to user friendliness, & memory (128k, 96k
free)
• LS 2000 scale chosen over last year’s CT 600 do to cost
($85 vs. $356) & increased load capacity (2000g vs. 600g)
• Dr. Buchowski interested in use for developing for
convenient nutritional study data collection methods.
Objectives
• Would prefer for the
• Data must be
calculator to talk to the
transferable to
scale
computer database
• Calculator must be
• Database must read
programmed to store
calculator output and
food type & amount
transfer to working
data
• Calculator must store
multiple entries, and
• Database must store
account for unfinished
long-term data
meals
Database Layout
• Contains 3 tables: ABBREV, PatientData,
RecordTable
• Contains 2 queries: FindTotalCal goes through
the record table and selects each code for each
personal ID, then calculates the calories from the
ABBREV table. FinalCalc sums the the numbers
generated by the FindTotalCal query.
• Results shown by Patient ID in a Form, Subform
format
Flow Chart of Entire Process
Sample Screen Shot from the
Calculator
Work Completed
• The experimental food types have been
categorized into a workable list of
approximately 500.
• Programming of the calculator is complete.
• The basic Access database is complete,
minor debugging details are being worked
out & the database is being made more user
friendly
Current Status
• We are testing the calculator program
for efficiency and workability
• The Access database is being improved
so that uninformed users can
manipulate the data
• We are awaiting word from TI on their
communication port specs, and have
contacted Dr. Broderson about finding
the baud rates and parity
Future Plans
• A process for transfer of information from
the calculator to the database will be
devised.
• The scale will be connected to the calculator,
allowing that TI doesn’t claim proprietary
rights to the port specs.
• We will connect the scale to the device &
package the 3 components together.
Future Plans (continued)
• We will continue to test the components on
ourselves to improve the design, then test
the device on a limited number of patients.
• The long term goal is to have this
computerized system replace the manual
system already employed by the
nutritionists.