Design of a high-tech vending machine
Vennan Sibanda, Lorraine Munetsi, Khumbulani Mpofu, Eriyeti Murena, John Trimble
Abstract
Imagine, paying and placing an order in a food outlet only to wait for an extra twenty to thirty minutes to get the ordered products. How tiring. This is the current situation in different food outlets and shops. What if we could save time by 75% to 83% and get an order in five minutes or less? This can be achieved by the design and development of a fully fletched high–tech vending machine. Current vending machine owners are facing challenges from hacking and vandalism. The aim of this paper is to design a high-tech vending machine that can dispense a variety of products at the same time. The machine uses fingerprint sensors and other high technological features for security and user-friendliness. The security system which uses biometrics for opening and closing doors was interrogated and used. An advertising platform was developed using HTML, JavaScript and CSS to cater for different products on offer. The alarm system is interfaced with a servo motor and a buzzer for providing added security. Sublime Text was used for creating a website and XAMPP was used for port forwarding. The result is a fully fletched vending machine that can safely vend about fifteen products or more all housed in a robust cabin.