S2000 Hopper optics question

[BCD]

I'm trying to figure out the wiring for the optics sensor on the top of an S2000 hopper.  There are six wires and I'd like to know which wires supply the power, ground, and carry the signal to a counter.  I'm Rube Goldberging a contraption that will count coins and not be part of a slot machine.  The goal, if possible, is to hook the coin optics to a counter, again not part of slot machine, to count coins as the hopper runs continuously and coins are ejected.  Any help in identifying the six wires for the hopper optics and recommendations for an independent counter for this gizmo would be most appreciated.

As you can tell I am new to this hopper business.  I apologize if this query is posted in the wrong forum; I'll move it if someone can tell me where it should be. 

The guys over in the Coin Comparitor forum were GREAT with their help and I'm hoping I came to the right place for this S2000 hopper question.

Thanks in advance for your time and any help you can offer.

Bart

[Foster]

My optic sensor only has 4 wires on my S2000
if you are trying to interface to the optics at the hopper connector on a S2000,
There is a interface board between that connector and the optics.
Best thing to do is look at the schematic for the interface board and wiring diagram for the hopper

[proten]

Here is the plug pin out.











I was looking at the wrong book - Sorry.

[Foster]

I do not think that is the hopper plug for a S2000 due to the fact the hopper does not run off 115VAC.

[TZtech]

Hello Bart

I am not familiar with a 6 wire optic either - There is usually a part number printed on these if you enter that into google you should get a datasheet for the relevant optic.
As far as counter go you could use one from a slot machine but you would have to build a small interface to change the 5v pulse level to 12v or whatever your selected counter needs. You can also buy kits like this one http://www.electronickits.com/kit/complete/elec/ck1612.htm which may work. Your last alternative is to use one of the many microprocessor developement systems on the market and then you can make your contraption do whatever you please ( I have recently started plaing with PicAxe. Arduino and basic stamps from Parallax are also good)

Ian

[BCD]

BIG TIME THANKS  to all that replied!! 

Sharing the schematics and pinouts helped me see what the functions are ( I think) of the six wires that connect to the optical sensor on the top of the hopper.  I'm going to try and determine of I can hook the "sense" wire on a two wire counter to one of the wires, excluding power and ground, on the six wire hopper optical sensor.  Next step is to find a resettable counter.

Again, thank you to everyone that replied.  Your time and effort is REALLY appreciated.

Bart 

[poppo]

Next step is to find a resettable counter.

Let me give you a heads up on this. I had worked on a project to use a hopper as a coin counter. I found that most of the cheaper resettable counters could not keep up with the rate that the coins were coming out. I ended up writing my own program for a basic atom. Attached is the basic atom code if anyone cares to look at it. It should work with a basic stamp with little modification.

[BCD]

poppo,

Thanks for the heads-up on the cheap resettable counters! 

What was the speed your hopper was running at and were you able to tie the resettable counter into the hopper optics?  My Rube Goldberg contraption only spits out about 200 coins per minute which is fine with me.  I'll increase the speed of the hopper when I get the feed chute fine tuned.  Maybe my gizmo is running slow enough to handle a counter

THANK YOU for sharing the code you wrote.  Sad to say it is Greek to me.  Mighty impressive but I wouldn't even know where to start trying to use it.

I really appreciate you sharing your info.

Thanks again,
Bart

[stayouttadabunker]

If you figure out how to ground (GND) out the tally button on this cheap little gizmo -
I'm sure the LCD counter can keep up no matter how fast your coins spit out of the hopper.
Ground out the "reset" button every time the hopper starts and
it will start from zero. >>>


http://www.ebay.com/itm/Royal-Blue-Case-LCD-Display-Resettable-Finger-Counter-/260863452747?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3cbcac664b

[TZtech]

Bart - Everyone is curious as to what You are building. We demand photos

Many years ago at the first casino I worked at we had somebody figure out how to create forged high denom tokens for our high roller area. All the machines in there were working with Condor acceptors at the time and these were letting the forged tokens through. You could spot the fakes but it meant emptying all the hoppers and sorting through the coins every day. I ended up building a contraption with a hopper spitting coins into a CC16 which was able to pick up the fakes. Two chutes then diverted the real and fake coins into separate buckets. Of course it wasnt long before someone got busted and the contraption got retired. Since then I have not had much faith in programmable coin acceptors and always go for Coin mechanism comparators If I have a choice

Poppo - K+ for the code. I can see next months hobby budget going towards Basic Micro. Will be interesting to see how these compare against PICAXE. Have you ever tried any of the other systems out there?

[poppo]

If you figure out how to ground (GND) out the tally button on this cheap little gizmo -
I'm sure the LCD counter can keep up no matter how fast your coins spit out of the hopper.

bunker,

That is the type of tally counter I had tried. It just could not keep up, and missed coins. I did not try that specific model, but I tried 3 others before I gave up. It also has to be fast enough to detect the short duration pulse you would get from the optics or a switch. The code in my project specifically looks for both the closure and opening of the switch to ensure it does not miss anything. If I only looked for the closure, the program was fast enough to loop around and count the same coin twice.

BCD,

I did not mess with using the optics. My IGT S+ hopper has a anti-tamper 'rocker' on it, which made it easy to just rig up a micro-switch to it. The first picture shows the microswitch in the down position (no coin). The bottom half of that picture shows me moving the rocker like when a coin goes though and it pushes the leaf on the micro-switch up closing the contacts.

The second picture shows the whole unit. The bottom shows a few coins counted and the value.

I've been using Basic Stamps for many years and then moved up to the Basic Atom. They both use almost exactly the same coding and can be ported pretty easily. I have not tried anything else like the PICAXE because I have not found anything I could not do with the Atom. And I already have a pretty good library of routines for just about anything.

And in case anyone was wondering just what the heck I was trying to do,  I just wanted a simple way to see how many coins I had in my hoppers without manually counting them. Plus as many here know, I have too much time on my hands.  

Click on the pictures to enlarge.

[poppo]

And here is one of those tally counters I tried that would not work properly. Of course I was going for the simplest solution, and this would have been it if it would have worked. But maybe it would work for BCD's project. These things are cheap enough to give it a try and they are easy to 'hack'.

[stayouttadabunker]

How weird and coincidental is this?!?!  
This morning I drive in with this in my tool bag to try
and figure out what drives it!??!  
It came from out of an old player tracking system I believe called>>> act components inc.
I've forgotten you did a whole thread on it last year!
I've got a new winter project to learn!  

[BCD]

   Good for you stayouttadabunker!!  Now, what the devil are they?!?

[poppo]

Now, what the devil are they?!?

He has a 16 x 2 LCD. (16 characters x 2 lines). His has a standard 14 pin interface on a header instead of along the edge.

Note: His is a parallel driven LCD where mine is a serial driven one. I prefer serial LCDs since they only need 3 wires - data, power & ground.

Note 2: Nearly all 16x2 parallel LCDs use a 'standard' interface and protocol.

[stayouttadabunker]

  Good for you stayouttadabunker!!  Now, what the devil are they?!?

Yes BCD,
It's just the player tracking LCD display ( front and backside photo shots) - similar as Poppo's display but with a blue lens.
Poppo has the program to drive them...
Now I gotta go find that thread on them! 

ADD: Here it is! >>>

http://newlifegames.net/nlg/index.php?topic=13848.30

[BCD]

Good for you stayouttadabunker!  Glad you found the info you were looking for.

[stayouttadabunker]

I wanted to try my suggestion of using a counter with the hopper optics.
I had a few minutes to fool around with it and the stuff on hand nearby.
I removed the hopper optics and took it apart.

Basically what this does is open and close an electrical circuit.
However, this one is designed for counting coins as they exit an S+ hopper.

It utilizes 3 wires :
1) Green ground wire
2) Red 12VDC power wire
3) Yellow signal wire.

I hooked the green wire into a bench-top power supply ground.
Then I hooked the red wire to the 12VDC power on the bench-top PS. joined
with one side of the electromechanical counter's two wires.
The yellow wire from the optics went into the other counter's wire.
It doesn't matter which side of the counter because an electromechanical counter uses
a solenoid to rotate a set of ratchet driven counter gears.

I turned on the power and ran a screwdriver through the optics....
the counter kept up with the rate of my hand fluctuating through the optical eyes.
I don't think any hopper can throw out coins that fast!?!?  

I submitted some photos of this quick setup on my bench and a short accompanying video clip...
Top photo is the hopper optics torn open.
The bottom photo is the receiver optic...it contains 3 wires...
a red power wire, a green ground wire and the yellow signal wire for the continuity signal...>>>

[stayouttadabunker]

More pics...
Top one is the emitter optic...
It has two wires...one for power and the other is a ground wire.
The bottom pic is that alien from that spaceship movie...
Click on any photo to enlarge if needed...>>>

[stayouttadabunker]

see the emitter eye ...uh...emitting? lol ...
unseen with naked eyes...>>>

[stayouttadabunker]

Anyways, I put the hopper optic back together, set it up with a counter
and applied 12Vdc to the whole shebang...
I don't know why an electronic LCD counter w/ resettable meters and NO MOVING PARTS can't keep up
with the coins exiting a hopper when an electromechanical one is sufficient?   
Watch how fast I fluctuate the screwdriver through the eyes...
the counter goes a million miles per hour! 






I know...my bench is a mess... >>>

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/vRBri-HFgYA&rel=0" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/vRBri-HFgYA&rel=0</a>

[poppo]

Nice video, but I think it is flawed. Without knowing how many times you actually pass the screwdriver through, you won't know if it's counting properly or missing some.

Did you try it with the hopper yet? Don't forget to count the actual coins vice what the counter says.

The cheap electronic tally counters may not work because of the program they are running. The timing is critical and they were not made to pulse quickly. I can even take the one I posted earlier and make it count wrong if I click it too fast. When used for counting coins it would usually be off by 1 or 2 every 50.

[stayouttadabunker]

The hopper optics in the video were signals to the counter as the screwdriver went down AND up.
Though I don't know how many times I passed the screwdriver through the eyes - I doubt that it's incorrect.
Quarters do not exit out of a hopper anywhere NEAR that speed...

I have an electronic LCD counter which I will hook up to a hopper in a few minutes
and I will take a video clip of it with 50 quarters exiting from it...

[poppo]

To get more technical on why a mechanical counter may work better than an electronic one, here is why.

On a mechanical counter, the solenoid gets pulled in as long as the 'contacts' are closed and then releases when the contacts open. Pretty simple. Being mechanical in nature actually helps as I will further explain.

With an electronic counter, the first problem you have is with what is called switch bounce. This mainly has to do with mechanical switches like on the tally counters. When you press the switch, the contacts actually bounce a few times. The processor can interpet this as multiple presses. So the software needs to put in a delay so it does not count it more than once. If this delay is too long, it can miss a second press since it thinks the switch is still bouncing. Typically 100ms is a long enough delay. But sloppy programming may have this longer. Thus fast pulsing gets counted wrong. Mechnical counters are by nature 'slow', so switch bounce is not an issue. The switch will be done bouncing long before the solenoid is done pulling in.

Next, with an electronic counter you need a delay method before looping back around or it may count again if you have not released the button yet. This may act like the key repeat on your keyboard when you hold it down, and the counter would keep counting if you hold the button down. So what you need to do in software.

1. Check for switch closure
2. Wait a little for switch bounce to settle
3. Now wait until the switch is open otherwise you will loop back and go into auto repeat. You can not just put in a fixed delay or you may miss pulses.
4. When switch is open, now you can do the count and update the display. But you have to do it fast enough so you don't miss the next press.

These cheap electronic tally counters were designed for people just clicking with their finger and this may not be reliable for fast counting. Either the pulses are coming too fast or the pulse duration being too short can cause it to not work. I wish it would have worked, as it would have saved me a lot of time.  

[stayouttadabunker]

That makes sense to me...
What if you pulled the chip the timer is located on and change the delay setting in the programming?