Piggy Bank Slot Machine Puts A Spin On Saving

May 12, 2021 by Kristina Panos 7 Comments

Saving money is inherently no fun until the time comes that you get to spend it on something awesome. Wouldn’t you be more likely to drop your coins into a piggy bank if there was a chance for an immediate payout that might exceed the amount you put in? We know we would. And the best part is, if you put such a piggy bank slot machine out in the open where your friends and neighbors can play with it, you’ll probably make even more money. As they say, the house always wins.

Drop a coin in the slot and it passes through a pair of wires that act as a simple switch to start the reels spinning. Inside is an Arduino Uno and a giant printed screw feeder that’s driven by a small stepper motor and a pair of printed gears. The reels have been modernized and the display is made of four individual LED matrices that appear as a single unit thanks to some smoky adhesive film.

This beautiful little machine took a solid week of 3D printing, which includes 32 hours wasted on a huge piece that failed twice. [Max 3D Design] tried rotating the model 180° in the slicer and thankfully, that solved the problem. Then it was on to countless hours of sanding, smoothing with body filler, priming, and painting to make it look fantastic.

If you want to make your own, all the files are up on Thingiverse. The code isn’t shown, but we know for a fact that Arduino slot machine code is out there already. Check out the build and demo video after the break.

As much as we like this build’s simplicity, it would be more slot machine-like if there was a handle to pull. Turns out you can print those, too.

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Slot Machine Has A Handle On Fun

December 5, 2020 by Kristina Panos 2 Comments

For some reason, when slot machines went digital, they lost their best feature — the handle. Who wants to push a button on a slot machine, anyway? Might as well just play video poker. [John Bradnam] seems to agree, and has built an open-source three-color matrix slot machine complete with handle.

In this case, you’ll be losing all of your nickels to an Arduino Pro Mini. The handle is an upgrade to an earlier slot machine project that uses three 8×8 matrices and a custom driver board. When the spring-loaded handle is pulled, it strikes a micro switch to spins the reels and then snaps back into place. Between each pull, the current score is displayed across the matrix. There’s even a piezo buzzer for victory squawks. We only wish the button under the handle were of the clickier variety, just for the feels. Check out the short demo video after the break.

If you’re not a gambler, you could always turn your slot machine into a clock.

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Time Bandit Clock Hits The Aesthetic Jackpot

July 6, 2020 by Kristina Panos 11 Comments

When was the last time you looked forward to looking at a clock? Not to find out the time per se — like gee, maybe it’s beer o’ clock already — but waited with bated breath to gaze upon a particular clock? Never? We don’t blame you, but only because you haven’t seen this fruit machine clock in action yet.

Every 60 seconds, the reels start spinning like some little man inside pulled the lever on a slot machine (or fruit machine, as they’re called across the pond). The reels slow down and stop one by one, left to right, settling on the four digits of time in 24-hour mode. Imagine the suspense of coming to see what time it is just as the reels start spinning!

[timebanditclock] grew this fruit machine out of old-school discrete logic beautifully applied to stripboard. Each of the reels has a DIY binary encoder that uses IR transmit/receive pairs to generate a binary word. These four binary words are compared to a binary clock module using comparators.

We think this is an amazing concept already, but then [timebanditclock] worked overtime by doing it all in discrete logic. Spin past the break to see a demo and stick around for the build video.

Want a challenging clock build that’s a little less challenging? Maybe it’s time to try circuit sculpture.

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Jackpot!: The Trials And Tribulations Of Turning A Slot Machine Into An ATM

November 21, 2019 by Danie Conradie 15 Comments

Have you ever wished that slot machines dispensed money as easily as an ATM? Well so did [Scotty Allen] from Strange Parts, so in collaboration with his friend [Matt] decided to combine the two. After a four-month journey fraught with magic smoke and frustration, they managed to build a fully functional ATM slot machine.

The basic idea is that you insert your card and enter your pin like on a normal ATM, select your winning amount, and pull the lever. This sets wheels spinning, which come to a stop with three-of-a-kind every time, and you win your own money as a bucket load of coins with all the accompanying fanfare. The project took way longer than [Scotty] expected, and he ended up missing his original deadline to show off the machine at DEF CON.

They started with an old broken Japanese slot machine, and replaced the control board with an Arduino Due after a lot of reverse engineering and hacking. [Scotty] did a cool video just on getting the original vacuum fluorescent display working. Integrating the ATM parts proved to be the biggest challenge, with number of very expensive parts releasing their magic smoke or getting bricked in the process. [Scotty] came up with an ingeniously simple hack to interface the ATM hardware with the Arduino. The cash note dispenser uses multiple sensors to detect if there are notes loaded and if one is successfully dispensed. These were spoofed by the Arduino, which controls two coin hoppers instead to dispense appropriate amount of quarters or pennies. The build was rounded off with some very neat custom graphics on the glass panels, and the machine was finally showed off at a local arcade.

This was an awesome project, and we can appreciate the fact that [Scotty] made no attempt to hide the real emotional roller coaster that anyone who has worked on a large project knows, but is rarely documented in logs. [Scotty] has made a name for himself by building his own iPhone from parts and touring Shenzhen’s many factories. Check out the videos after the break Continue reading “Jackpot!: The Trials And Tribulations Of Turning A Slot Machine Into An ATM” →

Turning A One-armed-bandit Into Web Slots

January 12, 2011 by Mike Szczys 14 Comments

[Kyle Kroskey] just finished his first Arduino project, adding web control to a slot machine. He started with an IGT S+ model which were extremely popular in Vegas and Atlantic City casinos for years, but are now being replaced with more modern versions. His grand idea was to modify the machine so that it can be controlled from a PC, then unleash a live stream so that the Internets can play.

This turned out not to be too hard, there’s just a few controls he patched the Arduino into; the button for maxing out the wager amount, and sensors that measure coin inserts and payouts. In order to keep the peace he disconnected the speaker but rerouted the audio into a PC so that it can be played over the streaming feed. This make sure it’s quiet in the room without sacrificing the online fun. The PC is running Ubuntu and controls the video feed, a screen detailing jackpot data above the machine, and facilitates passing webpage player requests to the Arduino for machine control.

For another fun slot machine hack, check out this gaming device turned bartender.

NYC Resistor Takes On The Machine

October 7, 2010 by Jakob Griffith 3 Comments

Here we are with Episodes two and three (aka, NYC Resistor part one and two) completing the Take on the Machine Hackerspace challenge we mentioned a while back. For the challenge NYC Resistor took an old style slot machine and converted it into a drink mixing deviant; even making the device post a Tweet for every drink. However, it seems to be lacking refrigeration of some kind, could this be the downfall of a potential winner for the challenge? Up next is the Hackerspace Pumping Station: One: do you think they can compete? Is there a particular Hackerspace you can’t wait to see? Let us know!

[Thanks Deven]

Skip Vegas With This BS Slot Machine

October 1, 2009 by Mike Szczys 11 Comments

bs2_slot_machine_DisplayInterface

We caught a glimpse of this Basic Stamp 2 controlled electronic slot machine on YouTube. We’re very grateful that [Mike Donahue] was willing to share more about his project with us.

He uses tactile switches instead of dropping coins in a slot, and a lever-style switch sets the one-armed bandit in motion. The action is displayed on a 1.5″ µOLED-128-G1 screen that has its own controller (which explains how this operates so well with the relatively slow BS2). For realism there’s some pretty good sound effects provided by a piezo speaker. We’ll look at the code, graphics, and some video after the break. Continue reading “Skip Vegas With This BS Slot Machine” →