Nerd alert! We've been working on ripping off the Coke machine in the breakroom and we've just about got it. Can any of you delinquents fill in the remaining piece of the puzzle?
It's one of those glass-front machines with rows and columns of drinks. You pick a grid number and a little platform with a conveyor belt on it rises up to your drink's level, the drink is kicked out onto the platform/belt which then drops down and ligns up with the inner dispenser door. The conveyor belt turns on and the drink is moved towards and then through the door where it then plunks down into the dispenser hole.
If you reach your hand up into the dispenser hole (Like Smackie 'tipping' last night's waiter) then you can hold the inner dispenser door closed. If the inner door is closed when you buy a drink and it can't dispense then it gives you your money back. This is where you make the big cha-ching ... You've got your money back AND there's a loose drink rattling around on the conveyor belt. Now the trick is to buy the second drink and get it to dispense both at once. The machine has got some smarts though and we're not entirely sure how it's sensing.
It appears that when the drink hits the belt, it runs at most a half belt distance to the right to try to center a drink (balance?) before it lowers/raises the platfrom towards the door. Then when it reaches the door it runs at most another half belt distance to eject the drinks. This appears to fail when the rightmost drink is already up against the wall ... The belt doesn't run it's half course so that when you get to the door level and run another half distance your leftmost drink doesn't make it. Pressure sensor in the belt that tells it when it's grinding a drink up against the wall?
We beat it twice (three drinks for the price of one) and failed twice. Then we ran out of money. Anybody know the answer? We'd like to keep cheating the vending machine because free shit is better than paying for it and it's a lot of fun ... like throwing a boulder through Eric Fancher's windshield.
From now on we're going to perpetrate this in the marketing breakroom. Those guys are too stupid for the vending machine people to ever suspect malfeasance. If we keep it up locally there'll be a f'n camera in the engineering breakroom in no time.
This is mechanical power transmission - one of my specialties. Unfortunately, I'd need to observe one of these machines because there's an awful lot missing from your description.
This is mechanical power transmission - one of my specialties. Unfortunately, I'd need to observe one of these machines because there's an awful lot missing from your description.
I'd like to hear more about waiter tipping.
wait - in S.F.? a waiter?
Nevermind.
Yeah we have lots more data but I didn't want to nerd out too much.
We're pretty sure Smackie ate man seed on his chocolate decadence last night at Aliotos. He knew it was there and he ate it anyway in his utterly morally bankrupt lust for chocolate.
ok, i got 3 dollars in the coke machine and 3 cokes on my desk with 2 poor cokes still stuck on the belt, pics to follow
Ok, you got to first base. NOW ... try to drop your drinks side by side on the left side of the conveyor belt ... Oh and put your hand up into the inner door when it dispenses. Grab first one, drop it and keeping door open grab the second. I think the dispense-sensor on the door tells the belt to quit rolling once the door slams behind the first dispensed drink.
And FYI ... once you've scammed a particular grid coordinate (say E-7) then the machine thinks it's OUT of drinks at that location so don't try that number again. If you rip the machine off with the ferocity of MROB wearing parachute pants in the iPod store then your machine will be falsely 'out' in no time. Moral here is rip off somebody elses machine.
when you do it, say you pick b3, it tells you b3 is sold out the next time
Exactly. See my previous post. It knows that you tried to buy something on that coordinate and yet had to refund you ... hence it must be out. Even though it knows the count of drinks on each row, it's like some sort of error condition override.
