Over the Thanksgiving break I went to a Chuck-E-Cheese-esque (Dave and Busters-like? A gaming arcade with a play area for kids) place and played a coin pusher for a few hours. Specifically an Andamiro Star Wars game https://andamirousa.com/product/star-wars-coin-pusher/ , though I also played an Avengers one from the same company. I thought to myself "that was pretty fun, I wonder how much a machine like this costs".
The answer seems to be about $15,000 for smaller models, with the Star Wars double machine being around $30,000. Which, you know, makes some sense considering it's a capital investment for a real business, and if I dropped $30 or so into it across two hours it'll hopefully break even in a year or so.
Anyway, I've got a bunch of Arduinos and motors and LEDs lying around the house, along with a big bag of coins, and some leftover pie tins and cardboard, and various knives and hand tools. I've taken them all out of storage and they're sitting all over the floor.
What are the odds that they (or some additional metal/plastic/wooden pieces I go out and purchase) get arranged into a vaugely coin-pusher state by April 5th, 2026? To be honest it should just be a weekend project to get something working, but it's already been a weekend and all I have so far is a mess and a soldered motor shield.
What counts as a coin pusher? It has to, at a minimum, have a coin pusher platform that does an approximately sinusoidal sweep motion while on, and at least one "standard" drop entrance (so you can't put your coins directly on the platform with 100% accuracy with your hands).
Some background: I work as a Mechanical Engineer and am reasonable as a programmer. I rarely complete projects, and most of the motors and motor controllers were from when I thought I was going to make a drilling robot that would slide along dimensional lumber and drill holes for me, like a portable CNC. Did not make a portable CNC. I have been diagnosed with autism and ADHD, but come on, who hasn't.
I will not bet in this market, but feel free to start up a side market regarding how many hours and dollars I throw at this, and I'll insider trade on that. I would guess I'm at like 5 hours, or more. I spent 1 at Lowes looking at metal before deciding I'd go McMaster or Pie-tin instead. I spent about 2 unpacking my soldering stuff, soldering, and cleaning up my desk afterward. I spent maybe 2 more unpacking my various motors and shields and microcontrollers and looking up part numbers and just figuring out what combinations actually made sense to try.
1,000@asmith I've been acquiring a large amount of various scrap materials, with the latest being about $200 of plywood that I got for $35 this morning. This will probably be the most useful of the bunch. I also got an enormous box that is probably at least $300 of aluminum for $5, but after fiddling with it for a bit, I think aluminum will be too heavy for anything but the base. Other scrap materials I've acquired include a wooden chair for $5 (by far the cheapest way to acquire wood for a frame), wire hangers for $1, and some clear plastic for a front panel that I think is originally meant to be a monitor stand $1.
The mechanical mechanism is pretty close to working. Version 1 with previous pieces of scrap ended up bending a bit too much and started rubbing on the base, and I switched to 3D printed parts for V2. V3 will need to be thicker almost everywhere, with just a bit more clearance on some holes, but it won't be much trouble.
Programming is done for either one DC motor just going forward all the time, or up to two stepper motors moving in sync. The appropriate motors are out of their boxes and tested, with power supply also tested, but nothing mounted.
I also gathered all the coins in my house into one place and have done tests to make sure each potential material has a nice enough sound when a coin hits it or slides down it. It appears that coin sound is mostly a function of the coin, rather than a function of the material it hits, which I didn't realize was the case.
In other words, there's a large pile of scrap and nothing actually built, but it is still in my mind and things are progressing.
A rough estimate of time investment is about 16 more hours since the post was put up, split roughly in half between acquiring more scrap and fiddling with the scrap I already have.