FAQs

Ellie is a smart pill box for active individuals and/or caregivers. What makes Ellie smart is the capability to organize all medications in seconds, set reminders, track adherence, and share results.

• Reminders- Ellie reminds users when it is time to take their medications and order refills via alarms, lights, and mobile notifications.
• Time-Saving- Ellie saves users time by allowing them to organize their medications in seconds. You simply take the bottle and pour the pills into the correct compartment, thus taking 30 seconds to organize all of your pills instead of 30 minutes.
• Affordable- Many so-called “smart” devices can cost hundreds of dollars and can only be accessed through insurance providers. 
• Peace of Mind- Ellie can share compliance information with healthcare providers and caregivers so timely interventions can be made if a user is struggling.
• Empowering- Prescription bottles and traditional pill boxes can make users feel stigmatized and sick. Instead, Ellie has a beautiful design and a healthy lifestyle brand that makes users feel health.

There are two ways to open the pillbox:

1. Holding the pillbox in both hands, push the lid forward with your thumbs, applying pressure evenly to its bottom corners. You will feel a slight resistance at first; however, when the pillbox is halfway open, you will notice the direction of this force switches, as the springs begin to expand the pillbox into a fully open position.
2. Stabilize the pillbox on a hard, flat surface. Place one hand on the pillbox, centering your fingers on the lower-half of the lid. Applying a small amount of downward pressure, begin sliding the lid forward in a smooth motion. Continue pressing down as you move the lid, until the pillbox is completely open. 

After you have taken all of the medication associated with a particular alarm, as indicated by the green lights on the pillbox, simply close the lid and you're done.  The action of opening and closing the pillbox, following an alarm, is interpreted as the act of taking your medication. This is apparent upon closing the pillbox, as the green lights specific to that medication will be cleared. Additionally, the pillbox will log this compliance data, recording that all off the medication for this alarm has been taken successfully.

Lid: The best way to clean the Ellie lid is with the inside of the white bag that you receive in the box with your Ellie. Simply turn the bag inside out and rub the lid softly. Otherwise, a microfiber cloth works great too. Microfiber cloths are often times included when you purchase new eyeglasses.

Tray: To clean the inside tray of Ellie, get a clean cloth damp with water then ring out excess water. Avoid immersing into water. Particularly avoid getting water on to or inside the lid. Proceed to wipe the empty compartments and remove any particles that you may see. Let the device dry completely before adding pills back into compartments.

196 mm x 104 mm x 29.5 mm--slightly bigger than a TI-83 graphing calculator.

A single Ellie pillbox can store seven different types of medication. The compartments can hold about one month's worth of small pills or one week's worth of large pills, depending on the frequency of intake.

At this time, yes. However, email our team at support@elliegrid.com with the size you would like to see us make next!

The inside of Ellie is made out of Delrin, a with a food-grade plastic. The outside of Ellie is a soft touch material that looks and feels great!

The lithium-ion polymer battery lasts approximately one week with typical usage. Includes a USB power cable for quick recharging.

The battery life of the pillbox varies by user, depending on usage and environmental factors. Most notably, the more alarms scheduled over a given period of time, the shorter the battery life of the pillbox will be. This is because when an alarm triggers, the pillbox is brought into a higher energy state, in order to power the lights and sounds that compose an alarm. These processes require significantly more power than the base, low-energy state of a pillbox; therefore, if having a longer battery life is a high priority for you, try to schedule your alarms in a way that will maximize the amount of time the pillbox is running in its efficient, low-energy state. Here's an example use case, to give some perspective, allowing you to better gauge what the battery life might look like in the context of your own, unique use case: One user has three alarms scheduled every day, and they experience a battery life of about a week.

In practice, here are a couple ways that you could adjust your pillbox usage to extend its battery life:

1. Whenever possible, schedule doses of different medications at the same time, combining them into a single alarm. This will result in fewer total alarms, and effectively reduce the number of times the pillbox has to enter a high-energy state, as well as the amount of time spent in that inefficient mode.
2.  Make an effort to respond to alarms and disable them as quickly as possible, to further extend the battery life of your pillbox. If you can cut down the length of your alarms, and keep it out of the high-energy state as much as possible. Also, find ways to make it easier for you to respond to alarms quickly, like always keeping the pillbox near you at all times. Another thing you could do would be to set separate alarms on your phone, a couple minutes before the alarms on the pillbox, which would allow you to anticipate your alarms going off and would give you a couple minutes to get ready to disable the alarm as quickly as possible.

First, we suggest you attempt restarting the device. You can do so by inserting a paper clip into the top right side of the lid. You should see a red light flashing indicating that the device needs to be reconnected to the mobile app.

 If you do not see a red light flash after attempting to restart the device, please email us at hello@elliegrid.com and we will be more than happy to look into this for you!

At this time, the app does not allow for bidirectional communication. It only notifies secondary users in the primary user's network about missed medications, compliance patterns, etc. The reason for this is that this guarantees they will get the message. If the primary users are not responding to the alerts from Ellie to begin with, we expect they may need assistance. Keep in mind, it may take time for users to adjust to a new system.

(Ex: If your loved one did not take his or her morning medications, the designated caregiver will receive a push notification/text about the missed pills. Then it will be up to the designated caregiver to take action. We recommend a phone call if in-person check-up is not possible.)

You can download the mobile app from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. 

To use Ellie with its mobile app, the mobile device must support Bluetooth Low Energy. The mobile app will be free and available for worldwide download.

• Android 4.3.2 or higher
• iOS 8.0 or higher
• Chrome browser with Web Bluetooth

You can interact directly with the pillbox image at the top of the main page, pressing a compartment to select it. Alternatively, press on the corresponding item from the list below. This list represents the contents of each compartment in order (starting with the top-left compartment and moving left-to-right, and ending with the bottom-right compartment).

Ellie's main functionalities work without having to be connected to a phone. You only need a smartphone in order to program the Ellie device and if you want to keep caregivers updated on your progress. These tasks are done via a Bluetooth connection. If Ellie is not connected to a smartphone, it will still be able to sound the alarm and use the LED light to tell you which pills to take and how many.

That being said, once you program the device the information is stored in the device, so no smartphone is required for the device to sound the alarm in order to  Ellie can connect directly through a smartphone's Bluetooth. After initial setup, no smartphone is required as long as your regimen doesn't change. The only time you need a smartphone is when you are programming the device.

1. On the main page, select an empty compartment.
2.  Ensure that you are connected to the pillbox. If not, you will need to connect before proceeding.
3.  Press the “+” icon that appears to the right of the highlighted compartment, in the medication list.
4.  Complete the form, entering your medication's information and scheduling dose alarms for its treatment schedule. 

1. On the main page, select the compartment containing the medication you want to view.
2.  Ensure that you are connected to the pillbox. If not, you will need to connect before proceeding.
3.  Press the “>” icon that appears to the right of the highlighted compartment, in the medication list. This will open a drawer on the right side of the screen, which displays the selected medication's stored details and upcoming alarms. Additionally, there are two buttons at the bottom for editing and deleting the selected medication.

1. On the main page, select the compartment containing the medication you would like to update.
2. Ensure that you are connected to the pillbox. If not, you will need to connect before proceeding.
3.  Press the '>' icon, on the right side of the highlighted medication in the list, to view its details.
4.  Press the blue, "Edit" button at the bottom of the drawer.
5.  You will be taken to a form where you can adjust the medication's details. Press the button at the bottom of the form to save your changes.

1. On the main page, select the compartment containing the medication you would like to delete.
2. Ensure that you are connected to the pillbox. If not, you will need to connect before proceeding.
3. Press the '>' icon, on the right side of the highlighted medication in the list, to view its details.
4. Press the red, "Delete" button at the bottom of the drawer.

When a compartment is selected on the main page of the app, the corresponding compartment should be illuminated on the physical pillbox, if connected.

Following the onboarding process, where you are prompted to connect to your pillbox for the first time, a unique identifier is stored for your pillbox. Subsequently, when you open the EllieGrid app, it will automatically attempt to connect to your pillbox, using this identifier, if it is in range. If the auto-connect attempt fails, you can repeat the set-up process to connect to your pillbox manually (available the main menu, under "Pillbox Settings" -> "Bluetooth Set-Up".)

When an alarm is activated, the pillbox will begin to flash its lights and make a "ping" sound every five seconds. An alarm lasts fifteen minutes, or until you disable it -- either by taking your medication or indicating that the dose was skipped, using the sensor on the pillbox. Meanwhile, you will receive a push notification on the app. These notifications basically just alert you that an alarm should be going off on your pillbox somewhere and that you have medication to take. In the case that you are not close enough to your pillbox to hear an alarm or its battery dies, the notifications serve as another line of defense against the possibility that you do not take your medication. Because these are merely just reminders, dismissing them does not affect the alarm itself, which must be disabled on the physical pillbox separately.

1. Ensure that you are connected to the pillbox. If not, you will need to connect before proceeding.
2.  On the main page, access the settings menu by pressing the icon on the top left of the screen.
3.  On the settings menu, navigate to: "Pillbox Settings" -> "Alarm Volume".
4.  Use the slider to adjust the alarm volume on your pillbox. You are able to choose between four volume settings, which range from muted, to full volume. You should hear a tone play at the specified volume when the slider is moved.
5.  Press the blue button at the bottom of the screen to save the updated volume setting.

Ellie retails for a one-time cost of $149.00 USD. The basic mobile app is free but the premium version is $1.99/week in order to send notifications to caregivers.

No, not at this time.

Yes, you can do so by inserting a small point into the hold located on the right side of the lid as pictured below. Hold for 3 seconds.

Hold down the Ellie logo on the bottom right of the lid for ten seconds. Ten lights will appear. The green lights represent the percent of battery that is charged. The red lights represent the percent of battery that is not charged.

If a red light flashes on your pillbox, this is indicating an error. This means that the time on the pillbox is not correct. ANY ALARMS THAT WERE PROGRAMMED WILL NOT GO OFF ON THE PILLBOX IF THE PILLBOX IS IN THIS STATE. In order to correct this issue, connect to your Ellie pillbox with your Ellie mobile app via Bluetooth.

Email a team member at hello@elliegrid.com