brendio

Maybe a silly question, but are the quarters still in the comparator? I can make it out from the photo.

That vending machine looks unfinished. You put the coin in, but need a key to open the door to insert the stick, and then again at the end you need a key to open the door to get the product.

I still need to fill the prizes in the top row. What is popular right now? Her's the rest of my gear there, plus a 60-in-1 cocktail cabinet. Quite a few firsts for me.

Thanks for that. It sounds like it is worth the extra, then, for a key master.

I have a chance for a new venue with a range of machines. Along with the usual cranes, and a basketball game, I am looking at a Key Master style game. Any tips or preferences between Key Master, Balloon Buster or Barber Cut Lite? I can get the Balloon Buster and the Barber Cut cheaper than the Key Master. Just wondering if the Key Master is worth the extra, and are the other novelties or still solid earners. It will be my first such game.

It means the telemeter has lost communication with the server for whatever reason - machine turned off, bad cell signal or something else. Every 20 min or so, the telemeter will ping the server to let it know it's still alive, even if there has been no activity at the machine. You could check the last errors log to see if that shows anything up.

I find this interesting, and after hearing about Twilio, it is on my list to play around with also, but for a slightly different purpose. One of my amusement machines is set up to send me text messages with meter readings. I would like to have that data sent and massaged into a more usable format for long term trends. My other use case was for running prize competitions to engage customers more for repeat business on my amusement (e.g. running a high score competition on arcade or pinball machines). As others have said, operators generally are not run off their feet with service calls, and I find most people are more likely to walk away from a machine than report malfunctions and location owners are too busy running their business. I often get to a location to be told it hasn't worked for days/weeks/months.

How could you modify a $5 USB cable to do this? I thought the problem was that MDB is 9-bit versus USB/RS232 which is 8-bit, so conversion is required.

I had something similar happen to me once. It was a brand new building that looked like a casino with its decor. The sales justified purchasing a new machine in that case, but it was still very frustrating. Your machines look decent, and if they sales don't justify new machines, I would walk. I had no regrets leaving sites that had an "entitlement mentality". Some people will never be happy. What happens when your new machines become old? Will they want an upgrade again?

I'm not sure I help you. I have tried searching for them as well, but can only find a couple of overpriced franchise operations.