Q: Wondering if an IGT reel slot can be modified to vend instead of pay coins?

[pinball2000]

I know sounds like a silly question right? I have a customer who wants to customize a slot for an event. Instead of paying coins we would like it to vend a product  when a player gets a  win of any kind.This dispenser would be on the bottom of the slot machine(stand). The size of the product/prize vended is the size of a cig lighter. The product would not need to be vended from the machine itself. The stand would be ok. We would build a custom stand to accomodate this.
   In other words is their a interface or way to have the machine pulse a relay that controls an external device upon a winning spin??The customer really just wants anyone who gets a win no matter how small or big to get a prize dispensed..

Thanks in advance for any help! JR

[stayouttadabunker]

I think no questions are silly here...
You want stuff to come out of the hopper about the size of a bic lighter?
Hmm...It's not a crazy idea but it would require some mean modifications.
My suggestion is to set the machine to go to hand pay
mode at an amount of say any wins of over 100 credits (This depends on
what game you would have installed in the machine) and the Jackpot reset key
would activate a snack candy spiral-type food dispenser unit
inside in the place of the hopper where the "prize" would fall into the tray?
In other words, every time the machine goes into
hand pay mode, the reset key would turn on the dispenser unit.
I believe you can stick just about anything in those spiral units and the motor runs on 12 Volts.
All you need to find is a supplier that has the spiral shelf unit and a motor.
You don't need the entire unit like in the picture below - just one or
two spiral shelves that would fit inside the machine!
Basically there's a stepper motor behind the snacks with a metal spiral
in which you stick a "prize" in each spiral turn.
The reset key would activate the stepper motor to do one complete
revolution of the spiral and the "prize" will fall off the shelf into a chute to fall onto your coin tray!

[Super Joker]

I think he's saying that he wants to use an output on the slot to activate a separate vending "machine", and not the actual hopper?

Might be tough. If you go to hand-pay, you'll need to keep resetting for each win. Might as well just have someone there handing out prizes, if that's the case. And it sounds like you want this to be completely automated.

This would be easy if each win paid the same amount.

Just convert it to tokens, and have the customers use tokens to "buy" the promotional items.

[reho33]

Also, make sure that they dont have to "pay" to spin the reels, it should be set to free play, just so you don't get into the gambling issue.............AWP, that's a different thing altogether with it's own set of laws.

[jay]

I don't think the mod would be that difficult. Unless you are trying to tie the WIN to specifc reel combinations.

To get something to vend you just need to press a button. All you would have to do is run a relay tied to the hopper voltage.
Everytime the hopper starts it closes the relay.

The hopper can be bypassed by creating a slotted wheel.
The wheel is affixed to pr replaces the pin weel.
As the slotted reel spins, its slots  pass through the hopper optics simulating a coin paassing through the optics.

[StatFreak]

If you really want to vend different items depending on the size of the wins, you might alter a hopper as has been done in the past so that there are tabs that pass through the optic as it spins -- or alter the hopper in some other way so that the optic is pulsed when it is activated. You can use a smaller angular movement (add more tabs than the number of pins on the default pinwheel) to speed up the counting process.

Then tap into the electrical signal coming off of the optic switch and feed it to a logic circuit with a short program that counts the pulses and uses the final pulse count to determine which dispenser to activate. You could tailor the code for any sized win and group different sizes of wins any way that you'd like.

[pinball2000]

Thanks for all the help people! The client would like any type of win whether it be a couple cherries or 3 identical symbols to award the same prize. This makes it easier for everyone. I am very familiar with pinball machines but  I have some knowledge of slots.

 I like the idea of utilizing the hopper motor to trigger a relay which dispenses a prize. My questions on this are:
 
Can a player just hit the cash out button and the hopper runs after inserting 1 coin returning a coin to them?  Thus they could win a prize without pulling the lever? Can the cash out button be disabled?

If an  wheel is used to simulate coins exiting the hopper what happens to the coins that are already in the hopper. Would they exit or stay in somehow Or would the hopper be removed completely?

Can anyone recommend a good IGT slot for a candidate? Are some better than others? Not sure if some should be avoided(breakdown issues etc)

 Thanks ! John R

[StatFreak]

Some suggestions and issues that I foresee:

You would want to set the machine up to default to cash and disable the cash/credit button so that the credit option could not be enabled. This would also prevent any extra credits accidentally put on the machine (see below) from being cashed out.

I think that if the players are going to drop coins into the machine that the best way to handle things would be to permanently ground the hopper fill wire so that every coin played dropped into the overflow hole and down into a bucket in the stand.

I would modify the hopper and add tabs to move through the optic to count out any wins to avoid coin-out tilts.

If a win of any type gets the same prize, then set the jackpot lockup limit to 9999. Choose a game with a low top prize (say 1600 coins) both to avoid lockups over 10k and because the hopper will still have to run to "pay" out all of those credits.

You will have a potential problem if/when a player drops more than max-coin into the machine in quick succession. Normally, once max bet is reached, all extra coins drop through to the tray, but if the coins are dropped in very quickly, one or two extra coins can get through before the lockout engages. When that happens, the machine responds by paying out the extra coins after the spin is concluded (i.e., it turns on the hopper, which would vend a prize.) Once the players figured out this loophole, they would drain your prizes dry.

You would have to counter that by either choosing a game with a minimum payout of, say five coins (no cherry) and not activating the prize redemption for payouts of four or less coins, or by using a Montana style credit SP chip that puts the extra coins to the meter to be played off. This would be the better choice, as you would also not have to worry about players complaining that they lost the extra coins that they dropped in.

Finally, if this is a promotion where players are getting a specific number of "free spins" using tokens, that's fine, but if the player is spending money to try to win prizes, you're friend will be engaged in illegal gambling because slots are not games of skill. I know that lots of modern "skill" games have RNGs and are essentially rigged, but in the case of a slot, one would not even have the pretense of skill as a defense.

Finally, since all wins are the same, you might want a one coin chip -- or you could just leave it to the customers to figure out that they're better off playing one token at a time.

Hope this helps.

SF

<ADD> Since all wins of any size pay the same, the overall payback percentage of a chip will be completely meaningless to you. The figure that will REALLY matter will be the hit frequency. You will have to decide how many plays-per-vend you want to achieve in the long run and choose the game and specific SS chip that has that hit frequency. Most CM games are in a narrow range of between 5-7 spins per win. Line games can win as frequently as every other spin or more (all lines played, of course). Buy-A-Pays would be problematic.

[pinball2000]

Statfreak, lots of great ideas! Thanks! would you mind if i contact you with a couple of questions to get this to work?  Please let me know. Thanks in advance! JR           email is  pinballplusATgmail.com

[morspeed]

Why don't you just set the jackpot bell to ring on all pays and when it hits it will send a pulsed signal to the bell harness which you can hook up to your vending mechanism instead of a bell?
Tommy