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VE Universal Control Boards


Snickers

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Every month or 2 we experience a few of the Vendors Exchange control boards with the display reading a total price and not allowing any transactions or keypad functions. It's basicly locked up. Power the machine off and then back on and everything works fine again. No drop sensors,running 3.2.1 software,hard resets have not done anything to help.

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Could be dirty power fluctuation, causing what is happening.

I was having the same problems with my VE board in a AP 6600. On moondog advice I installed a battery backup for a home computer just for the board.

That cured my problems.

My machine is in a machine shop.

 

cajun

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It has happened on more than a few of ours and it may be several months before it does it again. It's been an ongoing problem.There seems to be no rhyme or reason to it. Powering the machine off and then back on fixes it.These boards are only about a year old LCM and 7600's. InOne boards don't do this. Battery Backup? How do you do that? Does VE sell the "fix" for their boards?

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Put a surge protector on the power plug that can handle 800 joules minimum. If that doesn't help then you can use a battery backup like for a computer. Wire it in between the power in to the machine and the power supply.

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Our machines have LEDs so the issues are not from fluorescent lights. We don't have trouble with the inone kits or machines with the factory boards so it makes me wonder. I'm not up on computers but I will look into those battery backups.

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  • 2 weeks later...

All good suggestions. I haven't heard anyone talk about the coin mech. What coin mech are you using?  Back in the day when MDB was being improved on they started having the coin mechs exchanging data with the control board something not done before MDB. Altho the MEI 6512 was a good mech with few problems it would cause problems with D/N electronics.  Now the 6512 would communicate with the controller exchanging data of various things. This back and forth would cause the controller to get confused and would shut down the coin mech. This would lead to a service call of not taking money coin or bills. Turn the power off/on and everything would be fine. A week later or two weeks same thing. The tube level on the 6512 wasn't communicating correctly with the control board.  I discovered a solution by going into the settings on the D/N I could stop the control board from looking at the tubes. Mode, User then scroll to Coin and turn it off. Now it didn't care about the tubes. Worked great as long as vend price didn't require dimes and nickles for the payout because when it ran out it would just keep vending. Good rt drivers would keep coin mechs replenished so that wasn't a problem and you don't loose sells. Low voltage will also shut down the mech. Below 105 volts for an extended time will shut the mech down. I really like the MEI 7512 is fantastic coin mech because of the error log. It helps with finding some problems. 

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Coin mechs are all different. CF 7512, Conlux 5 tube, 9302GX, 6510,6512, and Guardian XL. We can't find any pattern to the issues we experience. If we trade the board with an InOne the problem is solved. I know these VE boards are good but something is making them more sensitive than other boards. It's not a daily or weekly issue its just every so often. All good suggestions and I appreciate the help. 

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I had a machine with a factory board that would lock up on occasion.  I happened to be standing scratching my head wondering when I saw the ceiling lights in the vending area flicker.  I watched and every so often they would flicker.  I went to my truck and pulled an old analog meter out of the dust and watched it.  Low and behold there were times the power would drop to 105 and back to 120.  Most machines have a 10% tolerance so that makes 105 too low.  My repair was to go to my local electrical distributor and buy a buck and boost transformer which I hooked on that line.  That solved my problem as it held voltage at a constant 120.  

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I haven't had this problem with the VE kits, but with the older AP 6000's.  I put a battery backup on it and continued having the same issue, only not as often.  The only fix was to change out the old board for an InOne kit as well.

I got to ask, what did VE have to say about it.  Are they willing to swap out the boards or provide you with an upgrade to the firmware?  Have you tried upgrading the firmware on the VE boards.  

I ran into a strange issue about 5 months ago on a Dixie 276e that I had upgraded the Eprom on to take credit cards.  The MEI bill validator would very randomly take the cash and not put credit on the screen for another 60 seconds to 120 seconds.   This happened a couple of times a week.  Then I finally observed the problem.   I thought it was a bad validator, changed it out, everything worked fine until later that week, then the exact same problem showed up.  I was about to change the board and LACanteen suggested changing the Eprom.  I did that and never had the problem since.  

I say all this to say, sometimes software does weird things.  I'm not sure if you can flash the memory in this, but I would give it a shot.

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