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ByteBites - The Makerspace Vending machine project!

Hi, and welcome to ByteBites!

The aim of this project is to document some of the technical details of how the vending machine works and how we have modified it to suite Makerspace better.

It is a Polyvend 491 machine (also seems to have lots of similarity with the Crane series) Purchased cheaply from ebay because of 2 faults:

• dead membrane keypad, corroded, replaced
• coin mech not working - misconfigured, fixed by updating config.

Capacity: Three spiral-vend shelves + 2 x 3-refridgerated can dispensers.

• Tray A - 4 items, A0, A2, A4, A6

• Tray B - 4 items, B0, B2, B4, B6

• Tray C - 8 items, C0, C1, C2, C3, C4, C5. C6. C7

• Can Row E - 4 cans, E0, E1, E2, E3

• Can Row F - 4 cans, F0, F1, F2, F3

NB: Due to the way it's set up, it won't vend the last can of any type... If there's only one can left, it will display "Make another selection" and refuse to sell it to you (Why???)

Coin mech - Cashflow 690 Series MDB compliant coin mech. (now wired via controller's MDB interface) Main controller board: Crane, firmware version 160.05

Current issues:

• Need to add an RFID solution for contactless billing of sorts - either interfacing to the Makerspace control system (eg like Nottinghack's efforts)
• Need to implement some form of IR beam system to tell if an item has been vended, as that is lacking!
• Might end up replacing the entire control board to accomplish the above (which is an old M68k based system). That said, it DOES support MDB making it extensible to card readers etc.