Enhanced Card Reader Emulator Dongle - Progress Report

[drcrippen324]

Heres what you are talking of revo i had an offer of these machines a while back but you dont want to know the price.......

[Revo1976]

Sorry drcrippen, i already do know the price....
It is just too much for home use, but understanble for arcade useage.
But i think it does not work like the emulator that daverob is working on.
Well some basics maybe, but i do not know if the credit functions are the same on a pachinko like he showed in daverobs little intro movie.

Let's see if i can get my pics online, mine is similar, but with a pachinko in it.

[daverob]

Ok, time for a little bit more teasing, as the sample PCBs came in this morning. I've only assembled one unit, and discovered that I'm going to need a little bit more practice hand-soldering surface mount components, as the results are not as neat as I'd like them. I'm blaming this on a combination of having to use lead-free solder and spending three hours today being poked in the eyes at the hospital having my annual 'can you still see' tests.

The soldering on the first sample unit might be a little untidy, but I plugged it in and it seems to work fine, so I'll be running a whole load of tests on it over the weekend. If it's OK then I can get on with assembling the units that will be going out to the beta testers next week.

[chmer01]

Looks good! I can hardly wait for these to go up for sale on the auction.

[arbycoffee]

I am drooling for them

[johntofva]

I am drooling for them

........but drool will make it short out!

[chmer01]

Only if you drool on them.

[drcrippen324]

ditto i cant wait to see them

is it worth saving yourself teh problems of hand soldering surface mounts and making the bords bigger and put them on a link cable to the dongle to be mounted else where that way you could use normal components

[daverob]

is it worth saving yourself teh problems of hand soldering surface mounts and making the bords bigger and put them on a link cable to the dongle to be mounted else where that way you could use normal components

I had thought of that, but bigger components are more expensive, and it also means extra cost for a larger PCB, larger case, and the link cable itself. It would save a bit on assembly costs, but not enough to offset the other costs.

I've done a lot of surface mount assembly in the past, but that was with better solder and equipment. ie using regular tin/lead solder wire, or with solder paste and hot air/infra red reflow systems. If I can't get the hang of it on these sample units, then I'll either make the investment in the proper tools for the job, or subcontract the assembly work.

Even with it this small, there are going to be some machines where it won't fit that easily, and I'm going to have short 4" long ribbon cable extension leads made up for these machines. For example the card reader connector on the Takao Hornet frame is on the side of the machine, and if the game is fitted into a cabinet there is not enough clearance for the dongle to fit. Same with the Aruze/Mizuho 20" LCD frame, except this time it sticks straight out the back of the machine.

[drcrippen324]

thats the way i was thinking also was the clearance factor

glad i built my cabs 9.5 inch deep

[slothappy144]

I would really like to get a few! keep up the good work!

[revmondo]

I hope to get one of these soon. I would be willing to beta test or offer soldering / assembly / shipping help from across the pond. Of course it makes obsolete one of the projects I was working on (ways to use the front buttons for something other than nothing), so I now have free time on my hands.

[daverob]

I seem to remember saying that I expected to have the dongles for sale at the beginning of April, and so I guess it's time for another progress update.

The beta testing has been going well, so far we have managed to test the dongle on machines from three quarters of all the pachinko manufacturers. We've also covered about a third of all the frame styles produced during the last five years (and a few older ones), this includes pretty much all of the ones usually seen for sale in the US and Europe.

It hasn't all been perfect, there's been a couple of frames that just wouldn't payout with the first beta test version. This was due to them taking a lot longer to respond to a payout request from the dongle than I was expecting. A couple of tweaks to the signal timing has got rid of the problem, and now they seem to work as well as the rest of the machines.

Also something I noticed early on is that on some machines, if the LED display was driven at full brightness, the sample units would tend to overheat. So all the beta test versions had to have the display brightness control disabled to prevent the plastic case from melting! This resulted in some machines having quite dim displays. The design of the power conversion circuits for the production version boards needed to be changed to fix this issue, and now the dongle runs at a much more comfortable temperature.

There's still a couple of small issues that need to be sorted out for the smartcard option, but apart from this the dongle software is complete. I'm holding off selling any units until this is done and tested, as I don't really want the administrative hassle of having different versions of the dongle with different capabilities in the marketplace. I've also got to spend some time sorting out some proper documentation, as the operating instructions sent to the beta testers didn't really look that professional!

I've been assembling a few of the boards, and have currently got around 40 finished units in stock awaiting the completed software and final testing. I've built a burn-in test fixture (picture below), so that every unit gets a 48 hour long endurance test working right at the design limits for voltage, temperature and output loading. This is intended to weed out any bad or unreliable units before the final testing, so hopefully I won't have to deal with these ones failing after they've been shipped!

I've attached a picture of the finished production version dongles below (including a couple of uncased units, just in case you're curious about what's inside the box!), along with a picture of the burn-in test fixture, and the prototype for the smartcard option.

The smartcard option is still about a month away from release. I'm happy with the hardware design, and there's only a few tweaks to be made to the software. These are to make sure the dongle recovers gracefully if the smartcard is removed while it is being read from or written to. It should be quite a cheap option as everything to support it is already included in the dongle, and so it's not much more than a cable with a connector at each end. I haven't done the pricing calculations for it yet, but I expect it to come in at about £10 ($20US, 15 EUR).

The cards are industry standard I2C memory smartcards, which can be bought from quite a few vendors. But I will of course be offering these cards for sale along with the dongles and smartcard option boards. Unlike the genuine parlour cards, these cards are reusable and can be recharged around 10,000 times. They can be recharged in the pachinko machine itself (using the setup mode, or a hidden switch), or in a separate standalone unit (which is basically just a dongle with the smartcard option, a switch and a 24v power supply).

I've invested in a plastic card printer (the type that's usually used for printing company ID badges) which can print photo quality images directly on the card using dye-sublimation or resin based inks, and then covers the image with a hard wearing clear varnish overlay. I'll be using this printer to offer smartcards with your own custom artwork printed on them, so you can have cards to match your games (like the Sankyo Neo Powerful set in the picture below), or with artwork to make them look like a genuine parlour card.

I've managed to keep my work schedule free for the next week, so I can concentrate on getting the last few things sorted out, and it should also give me the time to assemble a few more units. So at the moment the expected release date will be at some point during the Easter weekend, and hopefully the first units can be shipped on Tuesday 10th.

[arbycoffee]

W O W I E !!!!!!

[Chris]

[revmondo]

there will be MUCH rejoicing!!!
With only 40 to start I hope to get my hands on at least one before summer pachinko season starts...

[daverob]

With only 40 to start I hope to get my hands on at least one before summer pachinko season starts...

I've only got 40 finished units right now, there will be a few more available by the time I start selling, as I've got all the components to hand to build 90 units, and I should have most (if not all) of those assembled by the end of the week.

If all of those sell out quickly, then all of the parts for another batch of ~100 should be in stock from my suppliers for next day delivery. The only bit that I need that isn't a stock item is the plastic cases, which are on a 14 day lead time (but it'll take me at least that long to assemble another 100!).

[Sid]

You rock Daverob!

[chmer01]

Is it safe to presume they will be put up for sale in the auction area with a buy now?

[slotter]

Just AWESOME!!!!