Arcade Coin Mechanism by Isolt

Last crawled date: 3 years, 1 month ago

This is a coin mechanism I designed for a MAME arcade machine, LED Infra-red light bounces off the coins triggering a credit.
I didn't want to charge people money but liked the tactile experience of putting coins in.
This will accept any denomination (even washers or tokens I suppose) so I use a bunch of foreign coins I collected as a child.
The coin runs down the chute past an IR LED and a photo diode light sensor. When the IR light bounces off the coin going past it activates the diode triggering a key press. The circuit is quite simple and should work on any I-PAC or equivalent (I use a cut up USB game controller). This is a very simple circuit, only 2 components! The modules can be daisy chained and only need 4 wires for the first module then one extra wire per module.
I've included a cover plate but you could make your own out of metal for a more durable result
Suits any coins up to 35mm Dia x 4mm thick. Designed for an 18mm panel.
I screwed a small coin box under these mechanisms in my cabinet to catch the coins. Just cut two matching slots, see image.