How Does Vending Machine Works ?
What is vending machine ? Vending machine is a machine that sells any kind of product. These days, it usually sells cigarettes, foods, beverages, and toys. Vending machine sells can it’s products automatically without needing any employee or security to operate the machine. Basically, how vending machine works is when somebody insert enough money to the machine, then customer selects available product to buy, and after that the machine will generate the product and the customer can take out the product and get their changes back if there is any.
Vending machine was invented by a guy named Heron, a Mathematics Engineer that came from Alexandria. The first modern vending machine was announced in London in early 1880s, it was an automatic postcard selling machine. Now, vending machine is evolved and sells more variated product, and vending machines are available everywhere, like hotels, malls, stations, airports, and even on the streets. Modern vending machines today are also can be used using electronic money, so the customer doesn’t need to carry coins or cash.
Today’s generation vending machines have many different types, such as :
· Cigarretes Vending Machine
· Change machine
· Birth control and condom vending machines
· Food and snack vending machines
· Bulk candy and gumball vending
· Full-line vending
· Newspaper vending machine
· Photo booth
· Stamp vending machine
· Ticket machine
· Automobile vending machine
· Book vending machine, and the list goes on.
According to Wikipedia, similar to the development of traditional mobile phones into smartphones, vending machines have also progressively, though at a much slower pace, evolved into smart vending machines. Newer technologies at a lower cost of adoption, such as the large digital touch display, internet connectivity, cameras and various types of sensors, more cost-effective embedded computing power, digital signage, various advanced payment systems, and a wide range of identification technology (NFC, RFID, etc) have contributed to this development. These smart vending machines enable a more interactive user experience, and reduce operating costs while improving the efficiency of the vending operations through remote manageability and intelligent back-end analytic. Integrated sensors and cameras also represent a source of such data as customer demographics, purchase trends, and other locality-specific information. It also enables better customer-engagement for the brands through interactive multimedia and social media connectivity.
But how does vending machine really works ? How can vending machine detects if the money is real or fake ? How can it gives the right product the customer chose ? and How exactly the machine works as general ? In this article, i want to talk about all of this. From all vending machine types mentioned above,i decided to breakdown on how modern coin-operated snack vending machine works, the machine that used coins to buy the snacks.
So it all started when customer insert their coins. Vending machines use light sensors to measure the size of a coin and electromagnets to detect the metal type to determine what kind of coin it is. If it wasn’t quite the right size, or the coins was made using different materials, the coins will be rejected and goes to the rejection chute, delivering it back to the customer. When it is the right coin, the coin will go on to the sorting section, where the coin will be sorted and placed in the right column, based on it size. When the previous process was done, the machine will be on idle, waiting for the customer to press the button and choose their snack.
But wait, how does the machine know which product the customer has been chosen?
Behind the keys, there is a mini-sized computer, operating as the brain of the machine. The computer keeps track of the payment, so if the payment doesn’t enough, particular snack cannot be accessed. The computer orders 1 out of 32 matchbox-sized motors, to turn the spiral coil 360 degrees, so the snack in the front side of the machine will fall into the release chamber, and the customer can take the snack out from the chamber.
Usually, the operation will run smoothly. But in some versions of snack vending machine, the snack sometimes get stuck on the machine, and the customer can’t really do something about it, and it just leaves the customer angry and hungry. So, how is today’s generation snack vending machine deals with this problem ?
When the snack falls to the chamber, it breaks a line of ten infrared beams. If nothing crosses the beam, that means the snack isn’t delivered yet. So the computer will tells the motors to turns 360 degrees again, untill something crosses the beam, and the snack is delivered. After that, the computer counts the right amount of change should be returned, and the chamber that has coloumn of stacked coin will release the coins one by one, untill the right changes has been delivered.
All the components in the vending machine worked together to be able to do what it was supposed to do correctly. Once in a certain period of time, the owner of the vending machine comes and restock the product, and also collect the money inside the machine. Maintenance of the machine is also important to keep the machine works as it is supposed to.
source :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vending_machine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AkcWjB0UBE&t=1s
