Greenbacks ========== Greenbacks shows an intersection between a bill acceptor and an Arduino micro-controller. Background ---------- A bill acceptor is a small module that processes US paper currency ($1, $5, $10, etc.) and ensures that it's valid. You'll typically find these in vending machines. Whenever you feed the vending machine a $1 for a bag of chips, the bill acceptor ensures that you're giving it real currency and then tells the rest of the machine how much credit you now have to make a purchase. Hardware -------- For this project, the hardware is a Pyramid Technologies APEX-5400-SN1-USA bill acceptor and an Arduino Uno. Cleaning & Configuration ------------------------ Via Jon from Pyramid - 480-641-9733 Use a sharpie to mark the ovals. Go over 3 lines on top, 2 on bottom, lines along with the lines along the side. Sometimes the shine from the paper / ink interferes with the sensors reading the card. Follow the cleaning instructions in the maintenance manual. Communications -------------- The APEX-5000 series bill acceptors have a number of different ways of communicating the type of bill accepted. In this case, the bill acceptor is configured to send 10 50 millisecond pulses per dollar. A $1 bill will cause 10 pulses to be sent while a $5 bill will cause 50 to be sent. Adepto ------ The Adepto sketch is designed as an donation machine to accept money and allow people to trigger a series of fire effects. Its being used by the Crucible as a fundraising tool. References ---------- Apex 5000 - http://www.pyramidacceptors.com/apex5000.html Apex 5000 Docs - http://www.pyramidacceptors.com/support.html Arduino Uno - http://arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardUno