Well, after this project did not preform so well, I decided to find a better way to have a machine output food when a user inputted money. So, even at that time, I decided to make a vending machine.I had quite a few goals to achieve:
- Proper coin differentiation between the dime, penny, nickel and quarter.
- Several products
- Change dispensing
- Bill analyzer
Here's the second version. The coin goes in on the right until it is detected by the blue light sensor. It then falls into the black "bucket." The "bucket" could be rotated to let the coin go to the vault/change mechanism or to the coin return. The motor on the left moved a setup on the touch sensor into the "bucket" until the touch sensor was pressed. The rotation sensor in the left motor was then read to detect how far it had moved, and therefore, how big the coin was.
Here's the current version. It works pretty consistently if everything is in the right position before hand and the coins are placed in one at a time.So now for the change-dispensing mechanism. I currently have a rotating design, based off of the coin holders on this project. However, it's not working that well....it's hard to get a solid construction that can hold each of the four coins and they keep on coming out when the device rotates. I'm hoping to switch to a linear design using bricks (just hope it'll work)
