Bill Acceptor for Commercial Use

[typhoon411]

Hello all,

Joe here, I'm a electronics guy by heart and fiddle around alot with making guitar effects pedals, doing up random DIY projects. I have a background with using diodes, resistors, relays, etc... So, I've looked high and low through the forums looking for a detailed howto on using a bill acceptor with Freebox and only found fragments of information pointing to using an IPAC in some way shape or form. My goal here is to utilize a bill acceptor for as cheap as possible and build a solid Bill Acceptor FAQ for the forums (Sticky, tutorial, etc...)

Here is what I know from my research so far:

- Need to by the updated license for $250 (no sweat!
- Need to by a Bill Acceptor (I'm guessing MEI or MARS) How does the Matrix unit work without an IPAC?
- Need to by an IPac or equivalent to convert the bill acceptor signal to a keystroke (I initially wondered why I can't jsut use a relay and hacked up kepyboard for this, but I'm sure there are some good reasons..)

My requirements are as follows:

- Should cost as little as possibly while providing me the functionality desired (you can easily by an overly expensive bill acceptor that has more features than needed, hence this seemly obvious requirement.)- I want to use US bills (the new ones) not coins, so don't want to discuss coins as a requirement
- Bill denominations should accept 1, 5, 10 and 20 dollar US bills.
- I want to wire up two bill validator/acceptors in one juke box (should be a matter of hooking them up in parallel I would use to one iPAC or possibly needing two IPACS) my reasoning here is that when the acceptors fill up they no longer accept bills. It's nice to have two...

My questions to the group are as follows:
- Is there a bill acceptor that works direct USB and emulates key strokes?
- What bill acceptors have people used in conjunction with an IPAC
- What are the pinouts or required connections to connect the IPAC and bill acceptor
- When using an IPAC and bill acceptor does the bill acceptor send multiple pulses to the ipac when say a $5 bill is entered opposed to a $1 bill?  Or are their different pintouts from the bill acceptor that send pulses to different pins (wires) depending on the bill type? If the latter is the case, then I'm assuming you would hook this output to a different IPAC circuit and program to IPAC to hit the "C" keyboard key 5 times for  that channel?

I think that is the majority of my questions/requirements. I'm basically looking to know the combo and configurations of what works so I can start in the right direction. I'm also committed to putting together solid documentation for the next guy who looks to do something similar.

Thanks in advance for your input and response.

Joe

[Barcrest]

The matrix unit is USB and you just enable USB in the credit module. It will recognise the first 5 bill types.

[typhoon411]

Anyone know where you can buy a Matrix unit that supports US Dollars?

Thanks,

Joe

[Barcrest]

Think this is what you are after.

http://www.cheapkiosks.com/Bill_Acceptor.htm