Tom's Vending Machine

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General

Owner/Loaner: LVL1 Serial Number: none visible Make/Model: unknown Arrival Date: prior to Dec2010 Usability: no Contact: Jared Where: near front door

Current State of Affairs

Brad has built some custom boards with PCA9554N I/O Port chips on them. There is an input board, with 22 screw terminals to be connected to any buttons on the device, an output board, with 22 relays to trigger the 22 motors to vend products, and a rPi to handle i2c protocol between the PCA9554N chips. -Jared

As of August 25, 2015, the I/O boards and RPI can successfully trigger each motor individually, and code has been written in python on functions such as tablature, stocking, and interpreting I/O boards. (Thanks Hunter!)

Gary has built a first-run prototype of a transparent coin acceptor that will pass coins in front of the glass display on the front of the vending machine.

Jared signed up for a square account to get a card reader and is donating an iphone4 to be used in conjunction to accept cards for products on Dec 14, 2015.

To Do

• Hook up screen to RPI, and mount inside vending machine chassis.
• Modify Gary's coin acceptor design to work in the machine.
• Collect stock of the kinds of supplies that LVL1 wants stocked in the device.
• Create some sort of way to pay for things with a card number.
  • Brad was trying to make a web-based store that gave you a pin to punch in? See LVL1Vending Machine
  • Other options include interfacing a tablet with a square card reader to the rPi