Recently, I have been talking with some of our customers in Singapore. During the internet revolution, the Ethernet has pretty much conquered the PC market. Since Ethernet is such a popular and powerful interface, most of the embedded systems are following this trend as well.
One example application of using the Ethernet is in slot machines. In the Old days, when you walk into a Casino, you have to get change to play the slot machine. To avoid such inconvenience, a card is used in place of coins nowadays, so that you don’t have to insert coins every time you want to enjoy the slot machine. Once your card is inserted into the card reader, and you are ready to go. This card stores the number of credit you have left, so that you don’t have to carry loads of coins in your pocket. In fact, the slot machines are connected to each other by an Ethernet Network. Whenever you use your credits, they are automatically deducted from the central server’s data base.
No only this is a convenience from the customer’s point of view, but from the business point of view, you can also use this type of system to collect your customer’s data. Your customers are required to register their name, address and phone number in order to use this card. Since all of your customers’ playing records are recorded in your server, you can receive important marketing data such as how much they spend during their stay, Which day of the week they usually come?, What time of the day do they come most?, or How often do they come in a month? Once you have such important data, you can tailor-make your promotion activities to target specific customers. Perhaps, you can offer your customers a drink whenever they lose a certain amount of money! :)
Here is just one example of how our products can be applied in real life application. I hope you have enjoyed it! Please feel free to leave me your comments! Thanks! :)
FAE of WIZnet H.K.
interesting ^^. maybe there are some security issues. they use private information such as credit card, phone number, ... How do they implement that kinds of things? just curiosity ^^.
ReplyDeleteHi there,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment. I think to prevent private information from being leaked outside of the Casino. The network must be a local area network. Alternatively, we can also encrypt the data to prevent unauthorize access. As for the payment, I think this can be solved by adding credits at the cashier only similar to the payment system in Hong Kong, OCTOPUS.
Victor