WTS ~ Bettor TITO has arrived !!!

[Bettor Slots]

   Thanks for your efforts on that Rick...I know of a few that have wanted their 550 NXT conversion to work with the Deluxe and we have not had one of these around here to configure and test.   

[angryninjas]

Hey guys, just a quick preview of what I'm working on for Jim, looking to get some feedback on the design, and if there is anything special you would like to see added or changed.  Unfortunately, no Android at the moment... iPhone only... once we get the iOS version wrapped up, I'll see what I can do about porting it over to Android.  The part you can't see in the screenshot below is the configuration area, where you set your IP address, change your machine picture, and enter the details listed to the right (no, sorry folks, it doesn't pull all of that information automatically, lol).  Multiple machine support will be implemented soon, where you can control an entire row, or even an entire room full of machines at once.  For example, it will have a master control page, where you can tap "Lock Machines", and all of your slots will be disable at the push if one button.  Oh, and you'll notice a few features missing that you might ask about... don't shoot the messenger... I had to take out the volume up, volume down, mute on and mute off controls, per Jim's request.  He said they were not working on most machines... my own included.  Also, I can confirm that the app works perfectly on an S2000 with enhanced "R" board, for anyone wondering.  I know compatibility questions have popped up before on the R boards.  No issues here.  Anyway, here is a screen shot to give you guys an idea as to where things are heading.  Feedback is appreciated... good, bad or ugly.  At the end of the day, it's all you TITO users that I'm designing this for, so let me know what you would like to see changed, left alone, removed, replaced, etc, etc.  Additional skin support coming soon, once the initial app is completed.  It will be available in the first update, so you'll be able to change the background, button images, etc to match your machine's style.  Working on adding the buttons into a chrome button deck image for the first skin add-on, but always looking for ideas for more.

[rickhunter]

That's awesome, is that a native app or a webpage replacement that goes in the tito micro SD card?

[angryninjas]

Thanks.  Yes, it's a native app.  No more bookmarking an IP address on your phone like we've all been doing and getting that ugly little icon    With the app, you actually won't need to touch your micro SD card files at all, everything works behind the scenes and looks the same with the stock templates on the SD card as it would if you had a fully modified version.  The only part of the SD card code it uses is the commands to send to the machine.  All of the front end GUI stuff on the SD card HTML template doesn't get used at all.

[4 Deuces]

It hasn't even been a year since the first Bettor TITO thread was started (last October) and you already have a phone app talking to slot machines.  That is so f'n awesome!

 
 

 

[angryninjas]

Thanks    Now if I could just connect to the same IP address that my local casino is wired up to on their internal network... that "Add 2000 Credit" button could come in very handy!  lol.  I'm sure they've got a $100 machine or two in there somewhere 

[TZtech]

That looks pretty slick - Can you expand a bit on the developement process for apps if You dont mind - What SW did You use - what are the gotchas for developing mobile apps etc. Done any work yet with Bluetooth Low energy?. Also from what I have read the approval process for IPhone apps is fairly strict - how do you plan on making it available to users. I would add more option buttons to the main menu and put the machine pic and details on a seperate screen acessed by an button on the main screen.

[angryninjas]

That looks pretty slick - Can you expand a bit on the developement process for apps if You dont mind - What SW did You use - what are the gotchas for developing mobile apps etc. Done any work yet with Bluetooth Low energy?. Also from what I have read the approval process for IPhone apps is fairly strict - how do you plan on making it available to users. I would add more option buttons to the main menu and put the machine pic and details on a seperate screen acessed by an button on the main screen.

Nah, most of that is a myth.  Apple isn't very strict at all as long as you follow 3 simple rules...

1)  Do not offer any functionality that duplicates and/or competes with Apples own built in features, functions or products
2)  No nudity
3)  No copyrighted work  (even then it's possible... I have a Diner's, Drive-Ins & Dives app in the app store... I just had to follow Apples rules about how to use the name and references.  Wasn't a big deal, as long as you know in advance what the rules are)

Other than that, I've never had an issue.  I have 11 apps in the app store under my own account, and have developed private white label apps for dozens of clients, including Maxim, Sirius/XM and the Art of Charm.  Never had a single one rejected.  (insert shameless plug... www.angryninjas.com).   Hell, I even have a nationwide strip club locator app that was approved on the first attempt with apple.  No issues at all, since I didn't show anybody topless (or worse)... I came VERY close on a few screens, but not quite showing EVERYTHING, and Apple still approved it.  Search for the title "Strip Clubs" in the app store.  That's my app.  Hell, people can even upload pictures if they want, and once an app is approved, I've never had them go back in and re-review it, so as long as the pictures are clean when they review it, I'm not responsible for what other users upload (as stated in their user agreement that they must agree to when submitting photos).  Plus, if you ever do get a rejection, they tell you exactly why and what you need to do to get it fixed and approved.

All iOS apps are developed with only one kind of software... Xcode.  It uses a combination of Objective C and Cocoa as the backbone language.  With Apple, you can only distribute apps one way... through the app store, so that's how this app would be made available to the users as well (well, technically there's the cydia store as well, if you have a jailbroken device... That's only for apps that apple won't approve because they are either hacker tools, or fall into one of the 3 rules listed above).  We have one app that we made for the Cydia store.  It's called "App Sales", and only could not put it into the apple store because it logs into apples servers and retrieves all of your developer sales data, so you can see all of your app sales stats on an iphone.  Apple wouldn't approve it because they make a dumbed down version of their own, but it doesn't offer half the features that mine does... but apple won't allow competition for their own products (see rule 1 above).  Anyway, Cydia is a whole separate subject... I digress, lol.

As far as adding more options to the menu, there is a separate options screen with all the options to add your pic, change IP addresses, add multiple IP's, enter machine details, etc.  We display that information on the bottom of the main menu because we are limited by the hardware as to the number of "buttons" we can send... Jim requested that we remove the volume up, volume down, mute on, and mute off buttons, since they didn't work for most customers (on the tito itself, not just on the app).  That took almost half of our buttons away right there, lol.  The only other commands that we can send and receive from the TITO unit are add credits, lock terminal, unlock terminal and display stats.  Other than that, the only other thing we can do is add different amounts of credits, and have more "add credit" buttons with different amounts, which wouldn't really be very beneficial... mostly it would just act as a space filler.  Right now, it has add 80 credits, add 400 credits and add 2000 credits.  The average person may think those are weird amounts, but theres a reason... when adding credits, it adds the BASE DENOMINATION value of credits... so for example, if your machine is setup to play pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters on a multi-denomination machine, adding 2000 credits will only add $20, even if you have quarter mode selected.  If another person is using the same app, and has his setup for quarters, 50 cent, dollars and 2 dollars, he can add $20 just by pressing the "Add 80 Credits" button instead of the 2000 credit button, since his base denomination is a quarter instead of a penny.  Same reason the 400 credit button is there... it would be a hundred dollar bill for the average quarter machine.  We have to try to make it useful for everyone, regardless of the denomination of the machine they might have.  We tried to focus on dollar amounts... $20, $100, etc.

So basically, we had space to fill after adding the limited amount of buttons that the TITO can control, so we thought it would be a good place to display the machine image and statistics.  Working on a php script that will fetch the stats from the machine (coins in, coins out, games won, etc, etc) and display them in that area instead... right now pressing the stats button in the app will give you all of that info, but it's in the template .html file that you have installed on the SD card of your TITO unit.  We prefer to have everything native that we possibly can so it all looks built into the existing skin, especially with skin packs being an option in the near future for the app, but we have to make a script that will fetch that html document, scrub it, and scrape the data into our own format.  It will currently display with either the default template that the TITO ships with if you left it unmodified, or whatever custom skin you created when setting up your TITO.  We're working on having the stats display in the apps own template and skin, which will look more professional, regardless of what html files you have installed on your SD card in your TITO.  It's a work in progress, probably saved for an app update at a later time.

[TZtech]

Thanks for the detailed response - something I would like to have a go at some stage.
PS - The crimson tide kit looks great 

[angryninjas]

Thanks.  I have many other custom slot kits that I haven't thrown up on the site yet... Breaking Bad, Deadliest Catch, etc.  You can see them here: 
http://newlifegames.net/nlg/index.php?topic=24969.0

Too many projects, not enough time, lol.  As long as you are comfortable programming in the Objective C language, the rest is easy.  I still outsource a lot of my coding, cause I can get things to work the way I want, but it's not always the "proper" way.  When I get stumped on something, I just find a work around.  Thats the problem with being self taught instead of going to school for it I guess.  With any bigger sized client, I always have the coding done by professionals.  Personal projects, like the TITO app, is all done by me personally... the code might not be the prettiest, but the final result is the same and it works.  I'm better with the graphic design than I am with the actual coding, but I know just enough coding to be dangerous, lol.

[Nashional]

I came here to post a project I've been working on the past couple of days, not knowing that someone else was already working on an app.

Here is a link to a video I made during early testing of an app I'm working on. I'm uploading a better one now that shows more features. I'll post the link when it's ready.

This is a web app, so it will work on most any device. Right now, you edit one configuration file to set up your machine names, addresses, club name and default voucher information. There's no limit to the number of machines you can configure. It will even check to see if the TITO is online for each machine (you can see one offline in the video) before you can select it.

https://vimeo.com/73964501

[angryninjas]

Very nice!  Just a few things that I ran across that you might not have gotten to yet that may become an issue... I also went with a dollar amount at first, but realized that when it adds credits, it only adds the amount of credits for whatever your base denomination is... for example, I have a multi denomination machine setup for pennies, (base denomination, nickels, dimes and quarters.  If I say "Add $20", the command that the tito receives is to send 2000 credits.  If the same button is pushed by someone with a 25 cent base denomination, the command the tito would need to send would be 80 credits.  I'm guessing you've already compensated for that in either a settings menu or in the code.  Another thing, if you havn't already, you might want to get ahold of Jim and/or Jonathan... when we struck a deal for the app design, part of their requests was to leave the volume control stuff out of it, including the mute functions.  They are having trouble with most customers getting the volume commands to work on their TITO units, and have since scrapped it out of the interfaces (html templates included). 

Great work though, nice slick interface.  If you want to work on one together, or just for comparison purposes, I'd be willing to swap you xcode files so we can each see where the other has been going with the code and GUI's.  If not, that's fine too, but I'm not protective of my code, you can feel free to use any snippets you like.  Shoot me a PM if you like.  Maybe we can bounce some ideas off of each other.

-Dave

[Nashional]

Good points on the credits. I have a good idea on how to implement this so you can still add $$$ amounts. (Okay, I've programmed that in now).

The mute seems to work on everything that I have. I can take it out if they want me too.

For the GUI, I'm using jQuery mobile (just started learning it today).

[Nashional]

Here's a link to the latest video:

https://vimeo.com/73973419

[angryninjas]

Very nice.  Sent you a PM 

[Nashional]

Here's the latest video I made with the assistance of my lovely wife this evening. I apologize for the poor focus at times and me missing the buttons on the screen and having to try a few time to actually hit them (I'm not left handed). It was difficult holding a camera/phone in one hand and operating a phone/TITO in the other hand. Also, the wife caught a spelling mistake that has since been corrected.

When I changed the voucher, I just typed some random text "rree" that you can see on "Line 2", the left below the main title.

Then, of course, she hits a bonus right off the bat in Uncle Sam, so the mute doesn't fully take affect until the bonus is done.

https://vimeo.com/73987887

[Nashional]

Ok. I have this about where I want it now. Just a few more tweaks to go. Again, I'm not left handed, so it took a couple of times to correctly hit some buttons. And, the wife couldn't stop hitting bonuses while I was trying to show off some features. But, everything works very well.

https://vimeo.com/74077384

[Bettor Slots]

  

I think it's great what you both have been working on....really takes things to a new level.  Will be curious to see the final product(s) as I know a lot of the users will be wanting to get their hands on it.

Jim

[Nashional]

Here's where I'm at. Today I received a Raspberry Pi. I now have my custom TITO interface running on it (see previous posts for videos). So, I now have a completely self-contained device about the size of the TITO boards that can act as a master controller for all of the Bettor TITO boards on a network.

Again, this can be accessed and used by any device on the network with a web browser (such as, Android Phones / Tablets, iPhones, iPads, Computer, Laptops, etc. Even something like a PS3 that has a browser should work.)

Raspberry Pi boards are readily available to purchase online for $35. You'd also need a 4GB SD card ($5) and my interface program ($25 for now). I'm interested in selling just the software I've developed. So, my plan is that you'll need to obtain the Raspberry Pi and a SD card to put the software on. Then, you'd download a file from me to go on the card, put the card in the Pi, connect it to your network, apply power and enjoy!

Any interest in something like this?

[Bettor Slots]

pictures / video of how it looks and works?

[Nashional]

Here's a link to a video demonstration of what I consider to be almost final for a first release. Please let me know of any feedback you may have.

https://vimeo.com/74754909

[angryninjas]

Quick question guys... My TITO was working great, then I had to do a clear/key to change my denominations... when I got the machine back up, I keychipped it and setup the settings for the TITO as instructed.  No issues there.  When booted back up, I went into the settings to finish the tito setup, and all worked great until I got to the part about 3.4.3 WAMM setup.  My machine does not have a 3.4.3 WAMM menu in there.    I have 3.4.1 and 3.4.2, but thats where it stops.  So now my tito is not working, I just get the flashing amber lights... no solid light.  Any ideas?

[Bettor Slots]

prolly missed a setting...a lot to go thru on a S2000...PM sent.

[angryninjas]

Yep, thats what it was.  SAS channel was wrong.  Thanks again.

[angryninjas]

So I just did a clear/keychip on my S2000, and setup the tito again.  tickets work fine, remote access works almost fine... everything works on the remote access except adding credits.  Strange, because lock, unlock, stats, etc all work perfectly.  If I go to add credits, nothing ever happens.  I'm using the default files on the SD card, so theres no issues  with the button links or anything, and it connects to the machine by IP address perfectly fine.  Checked all cables, they are all nice and snug.  Credits add fine when I insert a ticket.  Any suggestions?