Slotbox - Spin Reels button for use with PC slot program

[Paladin]

I just finished a little slot related project, and thought some of you might be interested.  I'm calling it the Slotbox!

I recently bought the IGT 'Little Green Men' slot machine game for the PC.  One of the things you can do in the game is press the space bar to repeat your last bet.  Not too long ago I also bought a trashed slant top machine (long story) and ended up gutting it, which netted me some spare slot parts including the player buttons.

As I was playing the PC game I remembered that I had an Ultimarc I-Pac interface that I wasn't currently using.  In a nutshell the I-Pac is a small USB board that takes input from switches and outputs keyboard presses to the PC.  It's commonly used in MAME arcade cabinets to interface arcade joysticks and microswitch buttons to a PC in order to play emulated arcade games with 'real' controls.

It occured to me that using the I-Pac to send a space bar input to the PC in order to spin the wheels of the slot machine game would be super easy.  I then wondered if I could power the light bulb as well.  The I-Pac supplies 5 volts from the USB port, but I didn't want to tax the power output of the port.  I knew a regular light bulb probably wasn't a good idea, but an LED should be perfect.

I logged on to Radio Shack and looked up their LED's.  I found a cheap 2 pack of white LED's, item 276-0017.  I also used an online LED resistor calculator and bought some 68ohm resistors to bring the 5v down to the 3.3v of the LED's.  Then I bought a project box to hold everything. 

I bent the legs of an LED so it would fit in the bulb holder, then I soldered it in place.  I also put a resistor in line with the 5v wire.  I drilled holes in the project box for the button, and the USB cable.  I used double sided tape to hold the I-Pac to the bottom of the box.

It works great!  The LED's are only 7000mcd in brightness which I thought would be too dim.  I was thinking of using 2, but one works just fine.  The whole project only took about an hour, not counting 2 trips to Radio Shack and a dinner break.  I was going to move the button to the left and put a coin entry slot to the right, but I must have tossed the coin entry slot as I couldn't find it.

[StatFreak]

Now that's cool.   You can sit back in your easy chair and play computer slots. That program isn't the only one to use the space bar to spin the reels, so your box could be used for other slot programs as well.

Your next generation model could have "bet one" and "bet max" buttons, and maybe even "cash out" and "insert coin" buttons if you're feeling adventurous (or you could go over the top and rig a coin drop with a single optic to trigger a coin-in keystroke as you touched on in your post. You might then set up the internal board to be easily reprogrammed so that the box could be made to work with any PC slot program.

[stayouttadabunker]

Oh , I can see it now...
next we'll be pulling the handle on the side of our lazyboy chairs to activate the spin mode...

[stormrider]

Nice work Paladin I have a mame setup here upright cab 25in monitor, trac ball, with the Ipac 5000+ classic games on it
but also installed little green men CD and a few bally ones too what's best about the little green men CD
is the wife loves some of the titles on that CD and its just like playing the real game besides the fact I cant afford an Igame
so in total I have about 200 different slots to play in my mame I also have them installed on my computer which I might
add your new found spin button project. 

[reho33]

I would like to port winPoker to a coin-in and hopper out within a cabinet program. How does one start to approach this?

[StatFreak]

I would like to port winPoker to a coin-in and hopper out within a cabinet program. How does one start to approach this?

Check out MALA's project.
http://newlifegames.net/nlg/index.php?topic=3159.msg26123#msg26123

[Paladin]

I got hold of a touchscreen kiosk a while back.  It has a 17" touchscreen monitor, but the monitor is going out.  I was going to sell it, but then threw in a PC with a touchscreen jukebox program as well as the Little Green Men game.  It turned out to be so much fun that I'm keeping it. 

The touchscreen adds a lot to the game play, especially in the games with a bonus round!

[CaptainHappy]

Oh , I can see it now...
next we'll be pulling the handle on the side of our lazyboy chairs to activate the spin mode...

 

CH

[CaptainHappy]

Paladin,

K+ for ingenuity, imagination, and sharing!

CaptainHappy

[haaswood]

I think you are on to something.  I would like to see the idea continued to allow multiple inputs -- i.e. the pull handle and the push buttons.  Could take an old left over PC, a cabinet, etc. and some IGT parts... excellent!  Cool project.

[Paladin]

The pull handle would be easy, as it would just be wired up to the same input as the 'repeat last bet' button.  The problem is that the games only have keyboard shortcuts for 'insert coin' and 'repeat bet'.  There isn't even a keyboard shortcut for 'spin', so if you use the keyboard number 1 to add coins there isn't a button to make it spin.  What you do is choose your lines/credits with the mouse, then press the button which activates the 'repeat bet' keyboard shortcut which is the spacebar.

To make any other buttons or a hopper/ticket printer work, you'd have to completely dissasemble and reverse engineer the software to accept/send other external input/output, which is way over my head.