JPS5925262B2 - vending machine - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION The present invention provides a portable memory for storing sales data;
By inserting this portable memory, it is possible to sell stored products,
The present invention relates to an automatic vending machine including a vending machine that writes sales data into the portable memory each time a product is sold.

Examples of this type of vending machine include hotel lobbies,
A vending machine that is installed in a guest room or hallway and sells food and drinks to an unspecified number of hotel guests, and the opening and closing of the vending machine is stored in the key chain of each hotel guest's guest room. Memory for sale for storing data,
That is, there is a vending machine that uses a portable memory. In such vending machines, when a customer inserts a key chain or the like with a built-in vending memory into a predetermined location of the vending machine, the vending machine becomes ready to sell products such as food and drinks. Commercial memory, ie, portable memory, is composed of, for example, about 18 bits x 2 shift registers, and its memory capacity is limited, so it is necessary to handle overflow of the memory capacity. That is, when a vending machine is used by a customer who stays continuously or a group of guests, although it is extremely rare, the memory capacity of the portable memory may not be able to store all the sales data. As a countermeasure to this problem, simply increasing the memory capacity of the portable memory not only cannot be expected to improve the cost performance of the vending machine, but also makes it difficult to determine the upper limit of the memory capacity. The object of the present invention is to prevent the above-mentioned overflow by:
When there is a risk of portable memory overflow,
An object of the present invention is to provide a vending device in which the vending machine is not allowed to sell products.

The present invention is provided with a portable memory that stores sales data of products by a vending machine, and stores data on the allowable storage capacity of the portable memory regarding products and inventory data of products in the vending machine in the vending machine memory. When selling goods using a vending machine, data regarding the storage capacity margin of the portable memory is obtained based on the allowable storage capacity data of the portable memory stored in the vending machine memory and the sales data stored in the portable memory. This margin data is compared with the inventory data of the memory for the vending machine, and if the margin data is smaller than the inventory data, sales of products by inserting the portable memory are prohibited. Accordingly, X. Wow.

The present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing an embodiment of the configuration of a vending machine installed in a hotel or the like as an example of the vending machine of the present invention.

1 indicates a vending machine, and this vending machine 1 includes a contact point human power section 11,
Data processing section 12, vending machine memo I month 3, load control section 1
4 and a temporary storage device 15, and is configured to be removably attachable to the vending machine 1. The portable memory 16 stores sales data of products by a vending machine built in, for example, a guest room key holder or an appropriate case.

When the outer door of the vending machine is opened for sale, the contact input unit 11 scans the switches placed inside the vending machine corresponding to each product and receives the inventory data signal and the signal immediately before the door is opened, that is, immediately before the sale. Immediately after the sale, that is, immediately after the door is closed, inventory data signals are obtained and these inventory data signals are processed by the data processing unit 12.
Transfer to. The data processing unit 12 processes these inventory data signals and stores them in the vending machine memory 13. This vending machine memory 13 has areas A, B, and C, where area A has inventory data {AL area B has predetermined data about the allowable storage capacity of the portable memory 12 {BL area C has data about the allowable storage capacity of the portable memory 12 stores sales data indicating the sales amount up to that point. The load control unit 14 reports the customer's access to the product to the data processing unit 12 when key chains from an unspecified number of customers are inserted into sockets at predetermined locations on the vending machine. After the contents stored in the memory 16 are transferred and stored in the temporary storage device 15, it is determined whether or not to accept the key chain based on the contents in the vending machine memory 13 and the contents of the temporary storage device 15. When acceptance is permitted, the load control unit 14 opens the vending machine outer door to permit the customer to sell the product. On the other hand, if it is determined that the key holder is not a genuine one or that it will overflow as described later, the temporary storage device 1
The contents of the portable memory 16 that have been imported into the portable memory 16 are returned to the portable memory 16 under the control of the data processing section 12. Thereafter, the key holder is ejected from the vending machine 1 by the load control section 14. Whether or not to accept the inserted key chain is determined as follows.

First, the sales data {D}, which is the content of the portable memory built into the key holder stored in the temporary storage device 15, is compared with the allowable storage capacity data {B} of area B of the vending machine memory 13, and the memory margin { X}, then find the inventory data {A} in area A of the vending machine memory 13, and calculate {X
}−{A}.

Here, if {A}〈゛X゛, even if the customer purchases the entire inventory, the sales data can be written to the portable memory 16 without overflowing, so the The load control unit 14 receives a command to permit the sale of the product, but prohibits the sale of the product if {A}≧”X”.The load control unit 14 receives the command to permit the sale of the product. , the outer door of the vending machine can be opened, and in the case of a sales stop command, the outer door of the vending machine continues to be locked, and after rewriting the sales data to the portable memory 16, the portable memory 16 is opened to the vending machine. 1, outputs an alarm, and informs the customer that the product cannot be sold.The portable memory 16 is 36 bits (18 bits x 2).
A general-purpose shift register can be used.

The bit pattern is, for example, as shown in FIG.
0 bit is the address code corresponding to the keychain number,
The 11th to 35th bits are assigned to sales data bits representing the number of each product such as food and drink, and the 36th bit is assigned to parity. Generally, this kind of vending machine accommodates 5 to 8 types of products, 1 to 6 products for each product type, and about 30 products at maximum, and the pit pattern of the shift register 16 as a portable memory is determined accordingly. If an in-machine item is sold out, it can be replenished as needed. The storage capacity of each product in this vending machine is less than the storage capacity of the sales data in the shift register 16 described above.For example, the vending machine stores 6 pieces of Peel, but the allowable storage capacity of the portable memory 16 is 4 pieces. Set so that up to 15 bits can be stored. Therefore, a case will be described in which the vending machine currently has three bottles of beer in stock, a customer purchases beer, and the beer sales data in the portable memory 16 already indicates a record of 13 bottles. As mentioned above, since the data that the allowable storage capacity of the portable memory 16 for beer is 4 bits and 15 bottles is stored in the area B of the vending machine memory 13, the data processing unit 12
It is determined by calculation that the margin of portable memory 16 is two. In this case, since there is more beer in stock, a command is issued to the load control unit 14 to prohibit sales.
However, if the stock of beer is 2 bottles or less, or if the stock is the same and the previous sales data is 12 bottles or less, there is sufficient storage capacity in the portable memory 16, so beer can be sold in this case. becomes. The data processing unit 12 executes similar data processing for each type of product, and issues a command to the load control unit 14 regarding whether or not the product can be sold. next,
When the data processing unit 12 issues a sales permission command to the load control unit 14 and the customer pulls out the desired product from the vending machine,
New inventory data is sent from the contact input section 11 to the data processing section 1.
2, the data processing unit 12 reads the previous inventory data {A} from the vending machine memory 13, determines sales data from these old and new inventory data, and stores the sales data in the vending machine memory 13. The process of writing to both area C and portable memory 16 is executed.

As described above, according to the vending machine of the present invention, each time an unspecified number of customers access the vending machine, sales data can be written into the portable memory built into the customer's key chain, etc., without overflowing. This method determines whether or not the product is sold before the sale, and based on the result, it is decided whether or not to sell the product.Overflows can be prevented without increasing the storage capacity of the portable memory, improving the cost performance of this type of vending device. can be done.

[Brief explanation of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing an embodiment of the automatic vending apparatus of the present invention, and FIG. 2 is a diagram showing an example of a bit pattern when the portable memory shown in FIG. 1 is constituted by a shift register. 1...Vending machine, 11...Contact personnel department,
12... Data processing unit, 13... Memory for vending machine, 14... Load control unit, 15...
... Temporary storage device, 16... Portable memory.

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1 A vending machine that includes a portable memory for storing sales data, and that allows the sale of stored products by inserting the portable memory, and writes the sales data to the portable memory each time a product is sold. In the vending machine, the vending machine includes a memory for storing data indicating an allowable storage capacity of the portable memory and inventory data indicating an inventory amount of products in the vending machine, and the portable memory is connected to the vending machine. data regarding the margin of storage capacity of the portable memory is obtained from the allowable storage capacity data stored in the memory when inserted into the socket of the portable memory, and the sales data stored in the portable memory; means for comparing the margin data with inventory data of the product stored in the memory and prohibiting permission to sell the product by inserting the portable memory when the margin data is smaller than the inventory data. A vending machine with special features.