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yeah hi welcome to teardown Tuesday why do I have a Yankee five-buck note here one of these funny money cotton based crappy notes in god we trust' well it's a good question because we have for today's teardown one of these note validators or bill validators or vill acceptors or note acceptors or whatever you want to call them the ones that you typically find in vending machines and things like that that accept your bill you feed your hard-earned money in there and it either accepts or rejects it and detects whether the currency is legal so I thought we'd tear down one of these could be a rather interesting this one is a money controls aren't they're one of the I probably not want and they're not one of the major manufacturers of these things but they are one of the reputable reputable manufacturers anyway of these uh bill acceptors bill validators and this is the MC 2600 model that we've actually got here and there's a lot of art and science which goes into detecting whether or not a note is that genuine or not and it's going to vary between runs of notes over time they do actually change things and different currencies well I mean this silly us cotton-based funny money is just DNA crap compared to like ER in in terms of security compared to a Australian designed technology designed in Australia by the way these are polymer banknotes we've got in Australia I mean we basically don't have a counterfeit in that problem here in Australia because we use these very secure polymer notes but does sort of actually detecting notes like this going to use different technologies or can use different technologies to this simple US currency or is it that simple well they've got as you might know they've got hidden watermarks in there they've got security strips in there which are fluorescent different colors I believe under UV lights and you can tell the bill apart that way they use magnetic inks of course and even some of the watermarks art with the magnetic inks they can not resonate at differ you know resonate a a a detective circuit at different frequencies based on what type of node it is because not only do you have to determine whether or not it's a you know a genuine or fake no you have to determine well the unit has to determine the currency of the bill as well is it a $1 a $5 a $10 or $20 you know whatever so as we'll see as the various technologies that goes into this and you can easily see this for example if you just really light up these notes from behind it's a it's not hard to actually see here we go there's a hidden five in there for example you see that big five in there which isn't of course on the reverse side there so that's you know there's an inbuilt uh watermark right there and of course there's the strip you can see that I'll zoom in you can't see it on the note it's basically right down there but if we shine that from behind you can see it's got us a five on it and that security strip goes all the way down there and I believe I don't quote me on this but that flores's under a different color under UV light making use infrared detectors and all sorts of other detection mechanisms to to detect whether or not these bills are genuine see there's five going down there you can see the see the watermark in there so five five five plus the security strip that's it at least an absolute minimum that they've got going in these u.s. five dollar notes and as I said they do change things up occasionally so these bill validators occasionally have to be updated with new firmware you know they may not accept the new twenty thirteen five dollar bill for example so you got to go out and update the firmware for this sucker but yeah um so something like this so note validator here is going to use various technologies so I'd expect and art dimensions of bills for example they're probably going to you know make sure it's there you know the exact size and things like that as as a minimum so really we expect to find quite a few watt sensors in here and as you can see they've obviously there's like one main control board in the back here it's got various notes we'll take a look at that but it's got like a sensor module down the bottom of here underneath the or in as part of the slot and then they've got a cable running over there to the main board like that and this money controls that unit basic guard ipswich interface and then the vendor you know the person who owns a vending machine can just you know it set it to accept various notes is designed to accept one five ten and twenty dollar notes no higher and yes it is a use unit I don't know if it actually works or not it's obviously been pulled out of a unit but anyway you can enable and disable the various currencies and then this is a very simple post interface one it has as we'll see on the other side does have other interfaces as well but basically it can just give out one or four pulses per dollar so that's how other circuitry in the machine can actually detect things that you put your note in there doesn't give change or anything like that it just accepts the note in either puts it in the cash box in the back which we'll take a look at or just throws it back out it actually came with the cable to hook up to it and it just plugs into here I mean it does have that serial interfaces there you go and it's got a download Diagnostics as well you can for this particular brand you can buy a diagnostic box which hooks up to the PC and you know allows you to extract data out of it or change it or maybe even update the firmware remotely I'm not entirely sure about that but this one can be as simple if this one's a hundred and twenty volts ac model you can get ones based on that 12 volt DC and stuff like that so that just plugs in there and all we've got is basically 120 volts AC in and just a relay contact out or a you know a post contact out which gives the number of pulses based on the bill and whether or not it's accepted it that's it so incredibly simple interface just start for wires plus ground so obviously the bill goes in the front there there's a sensor board in there which actually detects all the stuff there's a processor board in the back and then this big thing looks complicated but it's not it's very simple you just release that clip and this is the money box there it is it just does got a couple of Springs in there and that just fills up with money obviously I'm not sure how many actual bills you can fit in there I don't know one I don't know what's the other average thickness of a bill no idea but you know you might get 500 or bills or something like that in there so I'm not sure how that would how long that would last in a typical scenario but there you go there's the diagnostic stuff for it and yet and basically they've just got some my belt and pulleys which then suck the note through here I'm not entirely sure exactly how I assumed this one if it rejects it will spit the note back out so maybe it only comes partial part of the way in because it's not what the note sort of pops out the back here and then either gets directed into there or spat back out so it probably comes like halfway in detects if it doesn't detect that it's a valid bill it just reverses the motors and what shoots it back out the front but yeah that's all there is to it um mechanically um you know pretty simple if we take those four screws off the front bit of dot yet Miller a bit of dust in there smells but we're in and we have our first look at the main board there that's the bottom of the main board they've got two very nicely aligned SMD resistors there I rather like that they've got a flat flex cable going into it looks like they've got a top censor board and they're the status LEDs there they I didn't see that but they obviously poked through the front and that's what we had on the back here that's what they had on the unit the back of the unit here the Diagnostics maybe you should actually power this thing up before I take it apart just in case oh I goof up some of the mechanicals or something like that I think I might give it a go okay I think I've got the pin heads correct this is of course a u.s. 120 volts AC 60 Hertz so I'm using my variable frequency converter here to generate adjust that I've got the ground wire hooked up as well so hopefully the magic opener smoke doesn't escape let's give it a go oh that sounded good all the motors went so let's whack in our funny money I don't know which way up there we go it gives your photo the head I guess there we go let's let's give it a go give it a bell and no it's not detecting it's not detecting my note no oh ah fire oh there we go you had something there we go not so it's obviously it's too rejected that straight away note there we go ah what I did there is a flick dip switch on the side here was just changed it from the pulse from vendor cereal to post protocol so maybe you know that's what was going on there but it doesn't like my five dollar note as all at all I've got two of them so I'll try another one and note does not like that in the least no I'm cool I'm pretty sure the note has to be up there I mean you know Yanks are probably laughing at me because our ones here pretty much um except the bills but basically in you know any any orientation at all but yeah that's not no it's just rejecting my five dollar note unbelievable like it I don't know is this a new note I don't know when was it manufactured you know you'd have to know like it does this support the latest firmware for this five dollar bill I've got five dollars enabled on the dip switch on the side but yep it's not accepting bummer so I have to be properly vertical as there something going on there no sometimes it doesn't go in all the way at all no nope loser it's kind of doing the business but it's not accepting my note Bhama let's just have a look at the back that when we shoot that bill in shall we and see what yeah as I thought yeah it goes like partial way in and then so it doesn't feed it alway and only when it accepts it and it gets to that point it process it accepts it will it feed up the whole way and then put it in the little storage container I just popped off that top cover there easy we've got some cutouts in the board here for three large cups there and of course there are obviously a bit of a premium on space there so and there's not much circuitry on the board so they've decided to make some cutouts there it not you know not uncommon for us space since if it up applications to do something like that but let's get the rest of this board out and we'll take out these ribbon cables here and see what's on the top side sort of levered that out and it looks like they were held in with clips so this board should just pop out too easy there's one more cable or lattice semiconductor pot we're going to have a good look in here but check that out interested it's a rather interesting board it's quite a bit of logic going on happening over here there's a lattice PLD over here there's a 6800 processor which we'll take a look at there's the prom obviously for the thing and basically we're in Sandwich sort of in the middle here is the mains a switch mode power supply obviously there's our a switch mode transformer there there's a high voltage caps 200 volts a pop and yeah I mean do input fuse there and we've got some protection and but we've got I mean obviously you know not a huge sort of thought given to differentiating or isolating these sort of you know the low voltage stuff from the mains our side here so I mean there's you know the dip switch sort of it right next to the main input filter caps you know you've got a certain ah it's crazy anyway we've got some regulators you know some low voltage regulators low so I'd regulator's around here maybe they're like some little optocouplers or something like that for the digital art I mean here's our mains input here so it's popping in here so yeah it just looks a bit broom you know it's a just messy business I so you know not huge amount of thought has gone into that sort of you know hack and slash kind of design I think anyway we got ourselves a couple of our optical detectors here this one here is for an optical encoder wheel down there if you can see that properly so that obviously turns around with the motor just to ensure I guess that a bit of feedback to ensure that yeah the motor has actually turned and the thing you know maybe for a slip two bills or or something like that perhaps some some sort of detection another one here which you know it mates up with this over here which I'm not sure that just looks I'm not sure how that moves at all that little plastic is just like a plastic tab so I'm not quite sure what that one's doing there may be some sort of you know this thing's going to have maybe you know a little bit of anti-tamper stuffing it as well but I don't really know what that's doing I mean she strange what does it detect that this whole mechanism has popped out of the bottom I don't know hmm firmware sticker might explain why possibly it didn't accept my note one of the reasons I'm look it's dated 2002 so 11 years old unless they're you know unless the stickers old and it's a reflash herbal or something let's have a poke under here and actually have a look yeah it's really crusty looks like it's been on there for 10 years or more that's for sure let's have a look at what we've got there you go it's an AM 29 F a double O 2 so it's a 2 Meg bit from a parallel flash prom so yeah it's it is reflash herbal but I doubt it has the internal ability to reflect or take it out work it in your programmer and do it that way now to understand whether or not that flash chip it contains the actual firmware for the processor or maybe contains you know the in all the data and the images and all sorts of other stuff for the various ayat notes and things like that all the data seems a bit big for that anyway to figure that out we need to take a look at the exact type of processor here and they've got a Motorola now our free scale of course M's classic MC 68 H c11 but of course e 68 HC one one comes in our endless varieties I'm saying out some contain internal problems some donees quid prom this that they come in a million different types well this is actually the f-series chip and you can't uh confuse it with other series like the e series different again and so you've got to look at the f1 and then the CPU five after that so we need to go into the datasheet and have a look at the specific type of chip to see whether or not it contains an internal rom or not and I check the data sheet which I will link in down below for this thing if you want to follow along at home no this one does not contain an internal rom although it's got an internal wa e squared problem only 512 bytes it's got like 1k of SRAM not a particularly powerful processor at all it does have a built in um 8-bit multi channel ADC though which they're probably using for some probably using for to measure some of the sensor stuff so we'll have to check the other chips to see if there's an external one there but yeah they're possibly using that so obviously this is the firmware for all of that and I was going to say that you know because we've got a letter P or D over here maybe they could have interfaced the memory through that to sort of you don't externally program it and then sort of you know route it through to the CPU here but by the looks of that no it's just going it's just going direct I can't see anything on the back there but anyway internal layers there but that's not it's running straight over so I need to reprogram that sucker we need to you know you need to pull it out or the service tech comes along pulls it out reflash is the chip and then updates it for the latest currency so most likely yes this contains unless they didn't change the sticker contains the firmware from 2002 so any notes after that if they have changed this thing likely won't accept them and the PLD here is an old lettuce mic for PLD only 64 macro cells you know it's pretty tiny not much doing there but obviously they need it for some sort of glue logic in there not sure what and we've got ourselves an is si external SRAM there in this case up 32k at times 8 a big whopping SRAM because this thing doesn't have much as I said like one case obviously they're using the peel there's some sort of glue logic to what may be you know get that into the processor although should be able to just whack that straight on the bus from the mains power supply we've got ourselves a power integration top switch device the top two four seven are and that's just a flyback controller there's our flyback transformer down there and up you know nothing special going on the main side of things there just got a fuse on the input they're common mode choke now bridge rectifier is four separate diodes underneath there and i won't fill the caps and then our main that flyback controller and Bob's your uncle there's our feedback opto a couple of hidden under there and that's my said just very messy layout I mean I don't like it at all look at this no over near here near the photo interrupter and it's just it's terrible awful layer the only other thing of note on here is this Texas Instruments TLV five six to nine and that's an 8-bit DAC probably not a huge surprise to I find that on their so they're using the duct to our drive some sense of stuff probably and the built-in ADC as I said in the HC eleven over there reading that back but whole bunch of transistors not sure what's going on there maybe that's a part of all the senses and what's that little sucker no idea looks like a 7 4 HC 1 4 there we've got you know it's part of the secondary power supply here there's an LM three to four by the looks of it and in this a two five nine five is just an 8 channel open collector driver likely just like the classic oh you Ln 2803 for example but you know here it is over here it's obviously driving the output pins but where are they I mean they're all the way all the output connectors all the way over on this side of the board crazy and same with the max 232 driver I mean where's the connector over here somewhere and actually just with the layout of the board I just noticed something they you can see yeah it's a multi-layer board you can see the internal the darker green in there you can see that's flood filled all the way through even all over this mains section here complete ground plane right around the whole blinking lot and that's also you can actually see that a similar thing having on the top I can't get a good light angle on that we can see it definitely happened in here and here's the mains input here right this connector here here is the two mains input right you know active and neutral there it is there's the ground input of course the ground input is actually connected through to the ground plane on the bottom and they got this trace running over here and that's all connected so the ground is connected through and of course this is a flyback mains power supply so the outputs are going to be isolated from the mains but look at the clearance look just around the pad they're a shitty meet like didn't person that laid out this obviously has no clue about the IE meeting any standard I guess and cuz I don't think I think it's unlikely to and you know they just had a layout boards for clearance I mean it's just an absolute mess and to have one solid ground fill all the way with is that little pissant amount of clearance in there what is that you know a couple of millimeters you've got to be [ __ ] me all right well enough of the PCB because there's nothing really special on there it's a processor with a dock and an ADC and maybe a bit of analog II stuff and that's about it so let's see if we can get into this sense apart I think that there might be a top and a bottom board there you can just actually remove the entire sensor thing like that and up up up lost some pulleys and things oops oops yeah I did take out a few screws and well I'm a few screws loose sure enough there are two whilst sensor boards in this thing this is the bottom censor board and nothing special on the backside there it's just a double sided board and it looks like there's no huge amount of circuitry in there but we've got a couple of LEDs and things we've got our edge to LA Note edge detection here so you know clearly they've got a lead here and a photo transistor over here so as soon as you put the bill in it inner upset and it knows to why then feed that through with the various uh rollers on the top and bottom side here here's the front rollers which I've actually taken out there little tiny rollers like that and they got springs in behind those so yeah it can then start once it detects that then it just starts pulling it through and at first glance this looks just to be an optical solution really I mean we've got some LEDs in here and basically three by the looks of it actually I'm not sure what's under there not sure what that top part there is I don't know but yet they seem to match up with the sensors I will have to get this board out in here of course but they seem to match up with the sensors on the other side which makes sense of course because they're going to be shining various wavelengths of light either visible or UV or infrared or a combination of all three with the different leads through the notes to actually detect things as it goes in but nothing hugely complicated there at all I actually don't see a magnetic detector at first glance anyway let's take the board out there you go there's the top side of the board and ER it looks like it is just an optical solution as I said because look we got a LED here of course which is um you know I know that could be the IR one I'm not sure but we've got an interesting angled like you know photo transistor or some sensor down in there and it's on like a 45 degree angle which is rather interesting we interesting to see if that's matched on the topside and why it's actually angled like that and we've got two extra LEDs in here once again they will probably be matching on the other side with phototransistors over there to actually detect that so yeah really I can't see any magnetic unless it's on the topside board on the bottom side board here I don't see any magnetic detection at all and as far as the chips go we've got an LM 336 R 2.5 volt voltage reference there and just a couple of Joule op amps LM C 60 62 and LM c 662 so really not much doing it all couple of transistors there presumably for driving the LEDs at quite a high brightness I'm assuming depart from that that's it and that played on the topside there I maybe had a thought that or maybe it's some sort of filter or something but I don't know I think it's just likely to start masking out the extraneous light perhaps I've got the top sensor assembly here and that of course just fits in place over there like that and the note just goes between the two slots there and then just pops up looks like we've got some other leads slash sensors there yet there we go there we go there's a couple of oh no they're just oh it's it's a light pipe okay that looks like it just might be a light pipe because this has no circuitry going I don't know other is this circuitry going up to that no that just looks like see if there's no boys I mean sorry so that just looks like a light pipe feeding in from there and coming back out there so the board the top sensor board is in here and yep they're probably got an LED and a photo transistor on the other side and then just detecting that the bill has actually made it through there I don't think that's a part of the validation of the note at all but anyway if we flip that open we can see that they're essentially duplicates I know there we go at one side they aren't lined up there we go so there they're different alignments there so two different combination of LED and then sensor so that's why they put that in to mask out the light from one side to the from one side to the other so there's two piles there that they're trying to read there's one one path lined up with the note there and one from the other and we probably saw that that's probably the internal strip perhaps lined up with the lined up with the text on the internal strip I don't know but it looks like exactly the same array with the lead and the sensor and two other LEDs on the sides they look like LEDs and those down there if we can see it look like the two matching photo transistors as I said yet so we get in look so it looks like there is for optical detection part for optical detection points this one here this one over here which just goes straight through the note and then two separate paths across the note there so I don't know you know feed that sucker in there feed all Lincoln in and what are they line up with I don't know not much your guess is as good as mine exactly what their actually what points of the note that they're actually detecting along the path there there's a good look down into that photo diode there and that is one big-ass sensor dial that thing that's for sure with a nice clear window over the front it could even be you know filtered in some way who knows but yeah I mean is that a UV or is an either are one I'm not entirely sure but they're obviously quite serious more serious with that one than just these smaller ones there's a smaller photo diodes down there that does look like it's got some sort of maybe some sort of filter lens there perhaps not sure but it certainly is different I mean this one is much much clearer and you can just see the gold inside there this one does look like it's or maybe it is no maybe it's the same maybe it is clear and it's just an optical illusion really that it looks like there's that coatings a different color it could just be completely clear ah sorry I completely forgot these two extra LEDs over there and they're so they've got a couple left so they got two extra points there so sorry one two three four and then five and six separate optical detection points there we go there's a much better view there we go we've got our metal can sensors here and then we've got our three diodes here and those ones those little suckers yeah there are most likely are based on the color of course the UV sensors there and these are the you know they could be infrared or whatever I don't exactly know we have ourselves a part number there folks SLD 67 hf2 1902 Brian to Google and sure enough that's a silicon X photodiode found the datasheet real easy link it in down below are a spectrum range of 400 to 1100 nanometers which puts it covers basically all of the entire visible spectrum plus the infrared up at the higher part doesn't do altra violet so clearly these two inner sensors here so this will be an infrared LED of course and infrared photo diodes well unfortunately the part number is going to escape us on that but just by the color of that and the fact that I know that you know these note validators are do often do infrared and ultraviolet UV stuff as well then none that's clearly you know almost certainly UV and there's our upper censor board once again practically identical except with that matching sensors so on this one we've got our infrared diode our infrared photodiode and which the other one sort of goes about here on the other side of the board so that gets those two strips in there and then we've got ourselves our photo transistor over here and over here which made up with the LED on the other side on the other board and then likewise these two LEDs here match up with the photo diodes on the other board so it looks like we could have three wavelengths operating here at UV this is most likely the UV sensitive photo transistor there and it's definitely like it's a photo transistor arrangement you call it because there's actually got the Q designator down there instead of the D designator by the way that's why you know this one is actually a photodiode so they have actually called a D down on the designator there these ones are likely infrared but they could be you know I I don't know you know you would have to know what that particular LED here is because these are quite broad range they can do anything from visible as I said up to the infrared range no problems whatsoever so but likely to infrared ones in the center there may be some visible stuff happening over here I'm not sure but you know it could be other wavelengths I'm not entirely sure but these almost certainly you veered well Bob's your uncle that's it as I said there are a couple of LEDs on the back here but they I'm pretty sure they're just actually detecting that the notes actually gone through and not the fact that because that's that's a position and if we go back to our first board here we can see the edge detecting this is obviously our first edge and then on our topside board we've got our second edge detection with this diode and that light pipe just start feeding back over there as I said before that just detects that the node of the second edge so it knows how far the notes gone through as soon as it hits that point it knows the timing to turn on the LEDs and read the data back at a specific point as the note goes through because you wouldn't do it over the whole strip you'd only do it at a specific point on the note which has that particular security feature that there try to read so actually I'm a bit disappointed that that's all we found really I mean basically we've got six different detection points they're using you know at most three different wavelengths of light there's no magnetic stuff happening there there's no width detection by the way of the note or anything like that at all so yeah this is a pretty rudimentary bill except on and of course people are going to ask well how easy is it to you know fool these sort of things well I'm not entirely sure you know you'd have to do a lot of tests but considering that you know no magnetic sensor it's just you know some optical stuff I don't know maybe it you know if you're really got down to it you could possibly I'm trying fool these things perhaps but by the time I went to that effort geez I don't know to get you know a 20-buck thing out of a vending machine oh yeah geez not worth the effort and I won't bother taking that apart there's nothing in there I mean there's two motors that's what our two wires hanging out there for that's you know nothing special whatsoever it's got that optical encoding that feedback positional will as I said but that's about all she wrote so there you go I hope you like that that's so inside a pretty rudimentary I mean a more modern one a more advanced one is going to use lots more advanced technology in this one I mean there's no image matching there's no camera there's no you know nothing like that which you might possibly get in a more modern one but you know it does the job maybe just for a simple vending machine that just read some six points at various light spectrums and well that's all there is to it so there you go if you want to discuss it and if you've got any more info on exactly you know might what might be going on in the various US bills because I don't know US currency that's stupid funny cotton funny money stuff I don't know about that but anyway if you got in ear more detail on exactly what's going on here please let us know it could be interesting to you know power this thing up and get the time in and figure out what the wavelengths these LEDs are actually working out and stuff like that maybe I could do that in a second video we'll see anyway if you like tear down Tuesday please give it a big thumbs up and if you want to discuss it the eevblog four link down below is the place to do it that's down below on youtube down there or if you're watching the embedded version on eevblog comm then the links are going to be up the top there but because you're looking at the blog website you already know that so I'm wasting my time catch you next time I still can't get over the layout of this power supply it's it cool you you