Elminating Hopper Technical Thread

[jetedrow]

I was reading up on the Eliminating Hopper thread and autoslot said that he was successfully able to get the King Camel to simulate a coin out. I currently am trying to build (not for commercial purposes - just for fun because I am a nerd and my wife thinks hopper noise is a bit loud at nighttime) a simulator for the coin output from that or similar machines with the 2 optics sensors. I was wondering if anyone would be able to tell me any information on this topic that they may know...

I am currently trying to write something using an Arduino board and I cant get any timings to work. If I understand how these work, it looks like from my research that all you need to do is when the hopper motor turns on, pulse (with a SPDT relay the two sensors since they are running opposite with each other). I have tried a 100ms and 50 ms pulses with 100 and 150ms pauses between pulses but have not been able to successfully "trick" the machine into thinking it has paid out coins.

Am I missing something obvious here? I believe I understand how these work (similar to the credit-add ones... I have successfully got my board to add credits to the machine) Does the pulses have to be in a different order/pattern similar to the coin mech signals?

I (and my wife) thank you guys for any help you may be able to provide.

Thanks,

Jeff

[compirate]

Interesting idea. Is there a way to take the motor from the hopper and mount a wheel to it with notches for the optical sensors? An easy mechanical solution - of course, getting the notch timing correct...

[jetedrow]

Interesting idea... I am sure this could possibly work, the only issue is that I would still like to have a measurement of the coin output for an LCD "counter" I have of the amt of tokens won.

Does anyone know how these slot interrupters work? from what I can tell with my meter i am getting voltages that are in the range of +12V, I believe these cna be treated as transistors, however from any spec sheets of similar items I have found at mouser, digikey, etc. it looks like the forward voltage should only be around 1.2V, not 10X that amount. Is there something I am missing? Anyone with electronics knowlege would be a great assett if they would like to help.

[alstonj1]

im surprised the hopper has two sensors most only have one on the hopper output . the switches are digital and either have a positive voltage (5 to 24 volt d.c depends on the machine )or commonly known as a high constantly on , then pulled low when a coin is sensed or they are low (0 volts ) and go high (positive 5-24 volts dc ) and the machine counts the pulses then shuts the hopper off when the pay off is hit . some machines continue to monitor for a pulse after the payoff and will error if another pulse is registered others once the hopper is shut off it doesnt care what the hopper does (these work great if you want to modify your hopper to put coins in the tray so you dont have to open the door .) most of the sensors are 3 wire a negative a positive and a switch leg thats either high then pulled low or low then pulled high only a meter will tell for sure .

[compirate]

There's a separate board, usually in the upper right side of the case with a battle counter connection that has token in/token out/big bonus/regular bonus/chance time signals if you need something for your LCD counter.

[jetedrow]

Thanks for the replies - when I get a chance (hopefully tonight) i will post some pictures an exact numbers from my testing. The machines I am testing with is a Sammy machine. Thanks ashtonj for your insight. Hopefully I can get this all figured out.

Compirate, I am aware of the signald from the reel stop board, I have the scematic on my computer. I will be using these in my program, I just want to figure out all of the hardware interfacing I have to do, since those plugs will be easy for me to interface with what I am building.

[alstonj1]

that board works well for that because its just a set of contacts (that open and close no voltage present ) on the associated relay and you can hook a cheap pedometer to it and it works well as a counter .
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a simple relay hooked to the hopper feed voltage to start your pulse and end it should work with your pulse circuit the machine will turn off the hopper and the relay to stop your pulse . im sure the timing isn't to critical since the machine waits a decent amount of time before tripping the hopper empty error . but go over by 1 pulse and youll get an error on some machines.

[autoslot]

It has been too long since I did this and don’t remember the timing exactly. There are usually two sensors one normally high and the other normally low. I took the hopper out and manually turned it to see the approximate timing that each sensor was high or low, then programmed the micro for those times. The biggest problem was there were too many different hopper timings required for one unit to cover all machines. Also, not all hoppers had both sensors high or low. I used the 24V hopper motor drive signal through a 5V regulator to power the circuit. That way every time the hopper was supposed to spin, the signals were generated until the hopper motor drive signal stopped. Good Luck!

[jetedrow]

I used the 24V hopper motor drive signal through a 5V regulator to power the circuit. That way every time the hopper was supposed to spin, the signals were generated until the hopper motor drive signal stopped. Good Luck!

Nice Idea! (why didn't I think of that?)

Thanks Vince. I will try some things out over the next couple days and let everyone know what I can find out.