Thursday, March 03, 2005
How the machine pays out the coins...
I will cover the modern "hopper" system in this post, the older machines use a tube system which I may cover in the future.
When you put your money into a fruit machine, it can go into one of two places, either into the cash box(es) at the bottom of the machine, or into the "hopper" which holds coins that it will pay out as winnings.
The hopper is a big box, with a rotating wheel at the bottom which coins fall into and as the wheel rotates, the coins get pushed out by a spring loaded mechanism.
You can see a picture of the wheel in the pictures below,
and another pic showing the wheel and a bit more of the hopper assembly below,
What you see above is contained in a container that funnels the coins in, and allows a large amount of coins to be stored. A typical pub 25 pounds jackpot machine expects to hold 125 pounds in the hopper. Club machines with higher jackpots can hold even more!
The hopper is pretty simple in operation, it consists mainly of a motor, which drives the disc through gears, which also act as a brake to stop the wheel turning when power is disconnected. When power is applied the wheel turns, and coins fall into the holes.
When a hole passes over a certain point, the mechanics in the hopper pull back a spring loaded firing pin, which then strikes the coin in one of the holes and literally shoots the coin out of the hopper.
The coin then passes through a infra-red sensor, and breaks the infra red light beam, which lets the fruit machine know a coin has sucessfully been paid out.
As infra red light beams need to be broken, this has led to people selling stuff on auction sites and websites that claim to confuse the hopper so it never thinks the beam is broken, and keeps on paying out coins.
Fine in theory, but look at the picture below......
The pic above shows the hopper encased in a SOLID METAL BOX, which serves a few purposes, one it protects coins from prying hands, two it allows the hopper to hold more coins and route them correctly, and three IT SHIELDS THE INTERNAL HOPPER FROM ANY LIGHT SOURCE.
The payout chute is also cleverly designed with plenty of sharp angles/bends so there is NO way you can shine a light up it to confuse the hopper, and even if you got something up there, the sensor is tiny, and the gap the coin passes through is very small.
Hoppers seem to be reliable, the main problem is if the machine ever accepts a damaged coin, it could jam and possibly damage the disk. Occasionally motors could fail, but the hoppers are cheap enough to replace.
The hopper itself does not know how much is in it, the fruit machine itself keeps track of that, all the hopper does, is spin and spit out coins, sending a signal each time a coin is spat out.
Most hoppers just require a voltage to operate the disk, and then they spin, some are more sophisticated, and have secure communication protocols for payout, but I cant comment on those, as I have not used any of those yet.
