New Life Games Tech Forums

When doing a payout out of the hopper, I get a reverse coin detection error fairly regularly.  Is this something out of adjustment causing this?  Thanks.

Yeah...stop hitting the payout button....lol

I don't know but one thing for sure, the hopper optic cannot tell if the coin is coming or going...
There's only one "eye" so it has no clue which way the coin is going except
whether or not a coin temporarily blocks the beam of light.
The ABC coin-in optics under the coin comparator however.....can.

Coins fall through the ABC coin-in optics passing by 3 optics...2 on S2000's.
The top one is "A", the bottom one is "B" on yours.
The coin must pass by "A" first then "B" to register a credit.
If the coin is pulled on a string up backwards and passing "B" first - it sends the "reverse coin" error
message to the display and shuts down the machine.

Why it's displaying that message during a hopper payout - is beyond my knowledge.

Thanks I thought it was odd too, but I only get it during payouts.  Weird

Just to clarify, there is a bit more going on with the coin-in optics. The two (or three) optics not only need to be occluded in a particular order, they have to be cleared in a particular order as well. If the coin can cover more than one optic at a time, then these two processes must mesh correctly. (e.g., A blocked, B blocked, A opened, B opened) The blocking and unblocking of the optics must also occur in a specific time frame (in milliseconds) that corresponds to the reasonable time it takes for a free-falling coin to pass through the optics, so if you lower the coin past the optics correctly but slowly it will still tilt.


I don't own an S2000 and don't know if the optics on the hopper are more sophisticated than the S+. Just a wild guess would be that some of the coins aren't tripping the optics fully, which could be caused by a worn or incorrectly installed knife, or perhaps having the wrong sized shelf or pin wheels. The reasoning behind my guess is that I've gotten reverse coin errors on my Gamemaker hopper when I tried using pennies in a nickel hopper. It's still just a shot in the dark.

Random thoughts on this -- mostly troubleshooting guesses, but perhaps can help you isolate the problem:

- There could an electrical problem of some kind that crops up when the power dips down due to the hopper motor engaging.  As far as I know, the hopper motor is the most power consuming item in a slot, and maybe the power to the rest of the machine is dipping too low when the hopper motor is engaged.  Try swapping the power supply behind the reels with a known good supply.  Try swapping the hopper with a known good hopper.  Perhaps one of the swaps can help isolate the issue.

- Perhaps there's a physical problem with the coin-in optics, as in one of them not quite lined up correctly and/or jiggling around.  When the physical vibrations of the hopper operating happen, it's causing a coin-in optic to give a faulty reading.  You could try banging the door of your machine with your hand and/or shaking the machine to see if you get the error on the display when the game is otherwise idle.

- Swap the MPU board with a known good board, and see if the problem goes with the board or stays with the machine.

Thanks for the suggestion, swapped hoppers with another machine and the problem went away, it is definitely someting in the hopper causing this.