New Life Games Tech Forums

Often when friends and relatives play my S+ slots (all completely coin op: we all love the sound of money dropping!),
they run out of tokens. [funny how that happens :25-]

I'd rather not have to open the door to get some coins out of the hopper. Is there a way I can install a (hidden or locked) switch that will feed out coins
as long as I hold it down, or spit out a specific payout quantity, WITHOUT messing up the machine's little brain? 

Thanks!

I dont have an answer but an idea. Since I guess you have the key, why not just put a bill into it and then hit collect to get your coins. You then at the end of the night can open it and get your $$ back out. Simple...
 :3-

A better idea take tokens out before friends arrive and put those casino coin buckets to use.
Leave enough for a few of the smaller payouts in each hopper, hopefully they have played most of the tokens back in if a bigger win occurs.
Maybe have a rest period after every one runs out so you can refill the buckets.

If you were to manually get the hopper motor to engage, you'd immediately trigger a coin-out error, as the machine would see the coins exiting the hopper without being asked to.  I think The Fatman's suggestion is a pretty good one if you have bill validators in the machines -- feed your own money in, hit Cash Out, and let folks continue to play without you ever having to open the door and scoop.

Mine run strictly on tokens so I preload the coin trays and keep an ample amount of tokens on hand. You can get 1000 tokens for around $100 or less. I think I have around 6 or 7 thousand for 4 machines.

Hmmmmnnnnnn......   The bill acceptor idea is good, except my machines have none.
(Hard-nosed old-fashioned coins-only kind of guy)
But the concept is there. Perhaps I can program the unit to believe
there's a bill acceptor in place, and insert a switch in the "bill accepted" circuit.
Alternatively, I can switch power-on to the hopper drive through a multi-pole
relay which simultaneously disco's the coin-out sensor.

(And of course the "tubs-of-coins laying about" approach certainly works, but offers
no fun at all to an engineer.. :200-  )

In the meantime, Abby's Dad, sources of new tokens seem to be drying up or
boosting prices heavily. I can't find a single slot-seller, including all those on the
NLG site, that lists tokens. The only source I've found for .984" brass is  TokensDirect,
who wants $155 for a thou a 50% price kick in the last few months; and I only need 500.
Cheese, I've got a little punch press in my garage, maybe I should start making them :50-

(By the way, I'm Abby's Grand-Dad!)

I have done what you want to do with a Universal Ultra machine, not an IGT.
What I did was use a double pole switch. On one pole I had power to the hopper motor. On the other pole I had 5vdc power to a second hopper optic, just hanging in the air, wired in parallel with the hopper optic. When coins pass thru the hopper optic there is change in output to the board from high to low that counts the coins. With the second optic in parallel a constant high signal masked the change seen in the hopper optic.
So I installed the switch and would trip it when the tokens were all in the hopper. The hopper would despense the tokens and the board never saw it. But what I found out was that I had to empty the hopper so no coins were left blocking the hopper optic when I turned the switch off otherwise I had coin-jam errors.
Not sure if it would work on IGT?

Hot Dog, Uniman! Someone else who enjoys the fun of a complex technical
way to get around a simple mechanical problem! Nice to meet ya!

Yes, that's the approach I've been working on: suppress the  coin-count and
other safety sensors while running the hopper motor remotely. Feels like
robbing an electronic bank!

It is somewhat different on an IGT, but not all that much. I'll let you
know if/when I have success. {Or join Dillinger in jail...:) }

The Bill Validator is not a simple pulse mech so "faking it" would be quite the complex set of circuits.
When a bill is inserted to the validator, it is compared against the software that says if the bill is real or not. If the bill is not found in the software a protocol called SAS is used to communicate to a central computer to see if the "coupon" exists in its database, if so then information is passed back to the machine via SAS to put on the correct number of tokens.
This is the fundementals of TITO (Ticket In, Ticket out). While SAS is a protocol that has a good amount of documentation around it, I am not so sure that anyone has mapped the output of the DBV and how it communicates with the machine. If you pull up the thread from BETTOR TITO (Bettor is one of our vendors) he has created an inexpensive ticketing system for home users.

You will also find that there are a number of other security features, such as the door optics are not something that can just be wired together in order to bypass.
-  They communicate to each other at a certain frequency so if they are not working, your machine doesn't work.
The same can be said for the ABC optics for the coin in.

I roll my tokens - bought a coin rolling machine.
    I found if I had a bucket of coins next to the machine, people would play a handfull then kind of get bored and walk away.
    I give one or two rolls in a coin cup, people crack them open, play, and then come back looking for another roll.
    Quite the lesson in gambling psychology - no sense of loss = no fun.
I have 4 machines as well, just about 12000 tokens.

To by pass the hopper and have it spit out coins......
As noted if you were just to run the motor the optics are going to complain that coins are going out and put the machine into an error state.
If you disconnected the optics you will get a different error since the sender can't communicate with the receiver.
- An early days hack (1960's - 1970's) was to use a light pen to blind the optics (by shining it up the coin drop) and the machine just kept spitting coins.... so they got smart and built in circuitry around this to make sure that the blinding, disabiling, etc... would cause an error. Other methods were tried such as wire snips of the optic wires etc.

One thing you might try would be to get an extra set of optics, and with the use of a DPDT relay - switch to the second set of optics (not mounted on the hopper) so that the machine thinks it has a valid set of optics, and then you run the hopper spitting out coins past a dead set of optics. When you release your switch the orginal set of optics kick back in for normal operation.

I have never tried this, and I am not entirely sure if a physical relay would switch fast enough to avoid an error but your only talking about $14 in parts to give it a go.

Just remember if that hopper runs longer than 30 seconds with no coin out detected the hopper will reverse and try to clear the jam. After another 5 seconds with no coin out you will get a 3300 error.

Best method would be using EFT and cashing out. I believe SP1271 support AFT

Neon,
If you manually engage the hopper through another power source the board logic expecting to see coins going out does not apply. The board doesn't know the hopper is running.
 
Jay,
 If you tried to switch optics I believe the board would see a momentary loss of signal and generate an error. Perhaps having two switches, one to power up second optic and then one to power down hopper optic could work.
What I did was tie in to the existing wires going to the hopper optic with one wire (power) going to a switch before going to the second optic(hanging in open space with nothing blocking it). With both optics powered up the board was getting feedback from both optics, hopper optic seeing coins passing and "static" optic in a steady state. In my case with the Universal the steady state optic feedback blinded the hopper optic feedback and the board saw nothing. So I only needed one switch.

Great way to get coins out of hopper without opening door and digging them out. Did all this back in the day when Bunker was experimenting with remote control, etc. So I blame him.  :72- :72- :72- :72-

Just want to say this disclaimer;
Using a device to cheat a slot machine or even possesion of such device is illegal and will cause someone a lot of trouble. Something I will/would never do!
What I did was modify the wiring in my personal home slot machine to simplify getting tokens out of the hopper. These modifications are not a device or cheat method and cannot be done without major time spent inside the machine. NOT something that could done in or transfered to a casino evironment!
Sorry, had to say it as your reference to "joining Dillinger in jail" bothered me.

There is the low tech method as well.
Assuming no lock on the belly door, cut away the metal behind the belly door so you can reach in and help yourself.

There ya go, the most simple method is usually the best!

Omigosh, Uniman! I had no intent to make you uncomfortable or imply I was crooked;
I'm just an old jerk whose mouth is always getting him in trouble; just ask my wife!
(Moderator, please add a "DEEPLY EMBARASSED" smiley!)

Thank you all for your input, most interesting.

Yeah, I knew your comment was tongue-in-cheek.
Playing with home slots is one thing, but sometimes there is what I call the grey area when it comes to ideas that could be used for ill intent by others or just preceived as an illegal act. I'm sure this mod is not one of them.
Maybe I overreacted a bit.

Anyways, good luck with your mod, let us know if it works!