Will an Old Arcade Bill Acceptor Work with Arduino?

YouTuber “Another Maker” received a free arcade machine (a dream of many of ours) some time ago, and after tinkering with the coin acceptor mechanism, has now moved on to the bill acceptor. The video below goes over how it works, hooked up to a handy ATX power supply breakout, and using its 12V lead for power.

Interestingly, there’s also a 5V input, which isn’t initially connected. He shows how it's able to accept one dollar bills, but rejects a fifty, and notes that its 2002 vintage means it can’t read some modern bills like fives, which were changed in 2008. Nonetheless, it looks like a neat piece of hardware, and hooking up the 5V line makes the device flash yellow and not accept any bills. Presumably, this would be some sort of output from the machine that rejects more cash when it's full or otherwise out of action.

Delving into it a bit more, the acceptor — set up with a DIP switches on the side — turns bills into emulated coin inputs. This means four signals for a dollar, 20 signals for a (pre-2008) $5 bill, etc. These signals can be read by an Arduino, or really any sort of microcontroller board, and he demonstrates this toward the end of the clip below with an Arduino Mega and an LCD keypad shield.

It’s a pretty cool build by itself, and certainly a great component to have in your mental and physical toolchest for vending machine applications. You can find Another Maker’s code for this interface here.

So how would you implement this cash reader? If you're Another Maker, you create a toilet paper dispenser + automated bathroom door system. Desperate times call for desperate measures. 😂