I have a very technical question. Since I'm sure you will be curious I'm thinking about making an arduino based remote monitoring system to plug in to an older vending machine (no Dex/MDB). I don't think a solution for this exists outside of a $300 motherboard upgrade to make it Dex capable plus the price of whichever monitoring solution you choose at that point. Please correct me if I'm wrong. A homemade system (arduino hooked to a prepaid cell phone) would come out well under $100 and my budjet is very limited. So in my limited electrical knowledge and with help of a helpful gent on another forum it seems like the easiest way to detect if an item is being vended on an older machine is to tap into the wires between the motor and the motherboard and detect the power in the wires when the motor is activated.

I have a USI 3015 and a Polyvend machine. I've actually removed the motor out of the USI and seen there are two wires attached. I don't know this for sure (and this is my question) but as far as I can tell the motor does not have power when it is idle. When it is time to vend the motherboard will send power to start the motor and continue to send power until the little switch on the motor activates again stopping the motor after it has gone through a full rotation. When the motherboard detects this it stops supplying power and the motor is idle again.

Is this correct? Do the motors not have power while idle?

At some point I can hook the power leads to a multi-meter and detect it, but both of my machines are on location so this is a little difficult. There is one location (my day job) that is more easy going and they wouldn't mind me experimenting on the machine, but if I'm totally wrong it would be nice to know in advance as well as any other ways to detect this.

Thanks

There are already devices that do what you are talking about to give standard dex data. One company that makes them is Inone technologies. I have 6 or seven of them on a few different older dixie narcos.

The company i work for has landed a large account but all
the machines must have debitek on them.
How reliable is something like this?

Are they using it already in cafeteria? I have an account that does this and there is a system for vending but its $60 a month per machine and we have 15 machines in the building. Instead we used Credit card acceptors from MEI and are now installing MEI recyclers in the main areas. We compromised until the company we use for credit transactions can develop a payroll deduction add on for the system in place.

Is anyone on here acquainted with the company AVT and their machines? Are their machines releiable? The inventory can be checked remotely on them which sounds interesting.
Their website says they also sell routes. For someone brand new in the business does this seem like a good idea? Thanks

Acrtualy I met some of there sales people at a trade show and the machines look very sharp but as far as whats in it they wouldnt really let me get a very close look. All machines can be watched remotely if they have Full dex output and all it takes is a 300(or less) dollar unit per machine. The only thing I didnt really like about AVT, and I may be wrong because they couldnt answer this really at the time, is that it didnt seem to follow industry standards. When I met them it was there first year at the trade show and they still had alot to learn themselves.

I have both pepsi and coke machines and we do not cover up their info but we do put a sticker with our info such as for service call xxx-xxxx with our logo above or underneath their info. We have found that most people will call a local number before they will call a 1-800 coke or pepsi number. In my opinion covering up their info makes it look like you are trying to be sly or not honest about who owns the machine.

Good Luck

I always cover their numbers! I couldn't tell you how many times someone would call the 800 number instead of ours and we never get notified that the machine is down. Also we do not allow Coke or pepsi to work on the machines we lease from them and they do not have keys to our machines like they do some 3rd party vendors. Instead they deliver all parts to our warehouse and we put them in, we just have to have the exchange part ready. We tend to have alot of parts in stock and alot of times put our own on the machines, because coke can be slow sometimes. Our window of down time is 4 hours.

In the US, Industry Standard is .75 for a 12oz can of soda, $1.25 for a 20oz plastic bottle.

maybe in your area but all regions are different. I know people that charge even higher then that and in my area we charge less.

20 oz(CSD, Tea, Flavors) 1.00
12 oz(All) .65
vitamin water 1.25
energy drinks 2.00
smart water 1.25
Dasani 1.00
Ozarka(Nestle waters) .60

I am from the U.S. too. I have found that in the southern regions the prices tend to be a little lower and in the far west they tend to be very high!