Ben Francis wrote:
Wayne Stallwood wrote: A lot of them seem to be a serial or USB, but the main reason it needs to be USB is that I'm thinking of interfacing it to a Linutop (http://linutop.com) which only has USB ports. Serial via a PIC would probably be easier for me because I've already written an RS232 interface to a PIC at university for a light sensor, so detecting a few on and offs should be easy.
If you wanted to go to the trouble of programming a PIC and sticking it on a board you can probably just stick a USB to serial chip next to it and then you have a USB interface from the PC.
e.g.
coin device <--> pic (IO to rs232) <--> usb chip (rs232 to serial usb) <--> PC
There are a few usb to serial chips around but I don't know about the cost.
Or, I suppose just buy a serial coin sorter and a usb to serial chip.
JD