Game counters on mame cabinet?

[Marsupial]

My cabinet came equipped with a Magnetic pulse counter that would increase at each games.

It was a bit over 40000. I don't know if it played for dollars or quarters, but even then that's about 10000$!


Anyone uses these electromechanical counters in their cabs?

[Marsupial]

Mine looks a lot like this one, with values in the 0 to 999999 range and no reset or settings.

I am currently having it run on an arduino, to have it rollover back to zero. Only 820000 clicks left to go!

I'll have my button interface click it once for every coin entered.

[Marsupial]

Look at the unit digit turning!

[Marsupial]

Slowly getting there.

[Zebidee]

Coin counters are common on commercially operated cabs. They keep everyone honest. The operator and the site owner, and any other players involved, know exactly how many coins have passed through the cab and therefore what payments are due. You reconcile between what the coin counters say and how much money is in the coin box.

[Marsupial]

Exactly @Zebidee

The machine I got had seen a bit over 40000 coins!
That's much more than the machine's worth!

I'm wanting to have a reset counter in the cab mainly to figure out the machine usage. How many games was played on it since I converted it in 2010?

I have no clue.


I'll install this counter with my upgrades, so I can keep track.

[mikew72]

My cab was made in 1995 for a 4 slot NeoGeo.  It was set to 50p per play and the counter shows 0237542.  That means it's taken around £120000  in its lifetime... It's a shame the coin box has been emptied 

[Zebidee]

I'm wanting to have a reset counter in the cab mainly to figure out the machine usage. How many games was played on it since I converted it in 2010?

I have no clue.

I'll install this counter with my upgrades, so I can keep track.

I appreciate your effort - most people just write the numbers in a log book, then do the math

[Marsupial]

Yeah it is taking much longer than I originally thought.
Not that it's a bigger effort...

But to have a reliable click to count, I need about 50ms power followed by about 50ms rest.

I tried shorter and it would sometimes get in a state where it doesn't increment unless we release it for a short while.



Right now it makes 1 unit every 100ms - or 10 units per seconds if nothing glitches.

I had 860000 units to click trough, so 86000 seconds. Or 1434 minutes. Which is near a full 24 hours.


Being that I don't really want to leave it unattended, I do it by batches of about 100000 to 200000... I'll bring it to 999900 to run installation test with the coin door and bring it to 000000 when everything is finalized and the cabinet update finished. Like a new cab!!


Not as easy as using a logbook, but much more fun.

In the meantime, we hear "click click click click" cobstently.

[Thenasty]

just a quick question.

How are you going to connect it to your Mame Running Cab ?
What encoder are you using ?

Cause my counter was 5vdc (lots of counters are 5,6,12,24 some DC some AC) and I can/could not hook it directly to my IPAC.
If I did, I probably fried my IPAC.

What I end up was creating an OPTO-SWITCH to trigger the counter when coin was inserted (later on I ditch connecting it entirely cause it's just for home).


Just make sure, you won't fry anything when your adventure resetting it to 00000 is done.

[Marsupial]

The pin from a microcontroller such as an ipac can't properly power the counter. But with small added circuitry (a simple transistor) and a power source (mine is meant for 6volts, I power it from the raw 5v from usb and it works) you can trigger it reliably without putting undue stress to your controller.

On my end I want to implement the control buttons, coins slot and start buttons on an arduino pro micro - separate from the control panel.

So, in my arduino-built keyboard encoder, whenever I will have a coin entered, I'll also flicker an output pin connected to said transistor, which will click the counter.

The circuit is simple. One transistor between power and counter to ground.

If there's interest I could properly document the whole thing. It really isn't much complex, and rather cheap.


Edit: having issues posting my prototype build

[Marsupial]

In the meanwhile, less than 300000 clicks to go

[Marsupial]

I figured out that the hickups were vibration related.

Somehow the powerline on the circuit wasn't always reliable, because when it failed to click, what would bring it back was to hold the circuitry in place.

So I built my board instead of experimenting on breadboard.

Now I can increment units every 25 ms very reliably with zero skips. Makes things much faster.

I am also finishing the prototype code for the keyboard encoder that'll go in there. With similar denouncing to other encoders such as ipac.

[Nephasth]

What do you count as a "game"?

Is this going to count an "insert coin to continue" scenario as a new "game" or is a continue part of the last "game"? Multiplayer games count as one?

I guess, what exactly in MAME are you using to send a signal to this to roll over one click?

[Marsupial]

What do you count as a "game"?

Is this going to count an "insert coin to continue" scenario as a new "game" or is a continue part of the last "game"? Multiplayer games count as one?

I guess, what exactly in MAME are you using to send a signal to this to roll over one click?

Same as what old arcade did, it mainly count inserted coins.

It isn't linked to mame per say, but counts the number of inputs on the coin related buttons.

So, yeah, insert game to continue will count.

There is no perfect solution, but it will give an overall sense of usage.

[meyer980]

Marsupial is right that there isn't a perfect solution...for example, many games have a service switch that would insert a credit but NOT trigger the coin counter (make sense). Games in MAME don't always have that service switch button as an input option.

From what I understand, coin counters weren't always one-to-one with the credit switches themselves either. They were a separate line that the game had to account for and trigger (at least it's this way in Nintendo Vs. machines)

[Marsupial]

From what I understand, coin counters weren't always one-to-one with the credit switches themselves either. They were a separate line that the game had to account for and trigger (at least it's this way in Nintendo Vs. machines)

Having interfaced the counter on my arduino-based button encoder, I had to supply 5v and interface trough a transistor. Therefore, I'd think the game pcb would indeed have to trigger the counter, not simply the coin switch.

Now, how it was interfaced (at coin insertion, at game start, whatever) I guess it depended on the game or manufacturer...

That said, I mainly click for each coin inserted on mine, so to count an approximate number of games. It's more precise than having no counter for sure.

[Nephasth]

Marsupial is right that there isn't a perfect solution...for example, many games have a service switch that would insert a credit but NOT trigger the coin counter (make sense). Games in MAME don't always have that service switch button as an input option.

From what I understand, coin counters weren't always one-to-one with the credit switches themselves either. They were a separate line that the game had to account for and trigger (at least it's this way in Nintendo Vs. machines)

Yep. This topic is labelled "game" counter. Only reason I had questions. Counting coins is what these are for. I was excited... for one second.