New dongle developments.

[daverob]

I've had a few people asking about cased smartcard readers to go with the dongle, and I've finally thrown together a couple of prototypes.

enclosures.jpg

The first one in the white case is the smartcard reader unit that will connect with the Card Reader Emulator dongle in the same way as the original uncased smartcard reader. The second one in the dark grey case is a standalone 'card recharger' unit.

The standalone unit has been developed mainly because there was a lot of empty space on the original circuit board design for the cased unit, so I thought I'd add a small microcontroller, a couple of buttons and an LED to the circuit board layout and make it a dual use design.

As the design was kind of an afterthought, it has been kept as simple as possible. It would have been nice to include a credit display on the standalone unit, but this would add complexity and cost to the unit, and would have caused a problem with battery life (the standalone unit runs off a small coin cell).

The standalone unit works by causing the smartcard to store a second credit value, and then uses this stored value each time the card is recharged. To do this the user simply adds credit to the card in the normal way (using an existing dongle/smartcard reader equipped pachinko machine) until the credit value on the card is set to the desired amount. The card is then placed in the standalone reader while the red button is held down. The reader will then make a copy of the current credit value and store it in spare memory locations on the smartcard. The card can then be removed and used as normal. When it is time to 'recharge' the card, it is simply inserted back into the standalone unit (with no buttons pressed), and the stored value is copied back to the credit counter on the smartcard. The LED on the top is just there to show status, red when the card is being written to, and green when it's safe to remove.

I haven't worked out what to do with the blue button yet, it was just added to the design to help fill up the hole in the case that is supposed to be for the cable connector! I'm thinking about using it as a kind of 'shift' key to select a different stored value, either a second one stored on each card, or a value stored in the reader unit itself to allow all of the cards to be set to the same value (even if the cards have different stored values).

I haven't worked everything out to come to a final price yet (I still need to get the PCB design finalized and a firm quote for the cases), but it's looking like they will be around the same cost as the dongle (£25/$50 each). If there's sufficient interest to make it worth the investment in ordering the PCBs and cases, then I expect to have them available to buy (via the auction site!) in late September.

As always, your thoughts and ideas are welcome

[new in town]

More Toys ! ! !

Thank you Dave.

[BigBearSteve]

COOOOOL!

Neat idea, Thanks Dave

[Dragonfly]

Another great design from Dave, we are so proud to have you here on Pachitalk can`t wait to order them .

Regards Dragonfly

[Bilko44]

Amazing, simply amazing what you can do, Dave!!!

[johntofva]

Yes it is ... Truly Amazing. (And Hello Bilko)

[rubberratt]

Very kewl

How about making a single LED blink in a certain sequence to read the card and you have to decode the sequence with a large table, or just some simple visual queue so you can know how many credits are on the card?

Make a game out of it ^_^

Fast Blinks= 100s
Slow blinks= 10s

ah... nevermind LOL

[Youngjedi]

Looks Great! Congrats! If Santa is looking for a toy maker...mind if I give him your name?

[daverob]

How about making a single LED blink in a certain sequence to read the card

I like that idea. There's plenty of room in the microcontroller chip to add the code for something like this.

It could be like the engine fault code reader on my old Volvo, for code 2-3-1 the led blinks twice, then pauses, then blinks three times. another pause and then one final time.

The LED I'm using is a bi-color one, so it could be done by counting the red blinks for hundreds, green blinks for tens and orangey-yellow blinks for units.

[arbycoffee]

Very nice Dave, you are a class act!

[teqkng]

Hey Daverob, have you looked into the pulse codes to the units at all? I am betting that using an old AMX axcess2 or 3 (REAL CHEAP ON EBAY) as a head unit the Pachis can be universally controlled from a single point AND much more information can be kept on the machines. I have all the old specs and information along with the programming code for these units if you want to experiment. Imagine a Universal Interface Dongle that could be software upgraded... All we would have to do is create the Macros for a single Stop board and experiment from there.

Um, for marketing purposes it coule be named a Interface Universal Dongle for a Catchy Annagram... (DID I SAY THAT?)

[daverob]

I've played around with the battle counter / parlour computer outputs. Somewhere in the back of my mind there's plans for a 'PachiStat' type counter unit with an ethernet connection, where all the data from the machine can be viewed on a web browser. but its a long way off at the moment (mainly because the ethernet development kit costs around $500).

[teqkng]

actually this is MUCH simpler and could be a good tool in developing further Dongle upgrades, the AMX Axcess is a simple rs232/IR/rf interface with a programable access memory for actuating a number if functions all at once. The code it uses is close to simple Q-basic and is so simple to experiment with it is rediculous. they are as cheap as 30 bucks now on Ebay so it is cost effective to get one to experiment with. it will control up to 8 pachis at once in the full blown Progressive setup I am trying to get going. All I need is to develop the macros. Look at the unit specs online (Manuals available at AMX.com) and tell me what you think.

[rubberratt]

The LED I'm using is a bi-color one, so it could be done by counting the red blinks for hundreds, green blinks for tens and orangey-yellow blinks for units.

That would be really COOL

[Youngjedi]

A hopper dump would be cool. I used the dongle to empty my hopper. it took about 20 pushes on the feed button. Maybe, hold right button down for three seconds, then press left button.

Just a thought, or maybe an area on the board where a small momentary switch could be attatched.