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Hasn't this happened to everyone? You've battled the gym treadmill for an hour, all the while consoling yourself with visions of an icy, sweaty can of soda winking from the nearby vending machine. Or, barely able to prop your head up over the chemistry textbook, you need a jarring jolt of cola caffeine from the dorm soda machine to pull you through the rough spots.
So you go to the machine, deposit your money, and nothing happens. Worse, you press the button for Coke, and out comes a bottle of tutti-frutti-kiwi-mango punch. You fume, fuss, maybe even give the machine a good thwack.
There's a new generation of high-tech vending machines to answer your frustration: Isochron Data Corporation and Motorola jointly introduced a new online vending system, VendCast, on Monday.
"It's the first vending-machine system that can monitor and transmit information -- about stock inventory, maintenance problems, and sales history -- to the vendor, on a real-time basis," said Isochron president Aruni Gunasegaram.
In the past, vending machines were generally maintained by delivery truck drivers who weren't necessarily prepared to address all customer complaints. Using Motorola's Reflex two-way wireless paging service, the VendCast system allows the vending machine itself to alert a soft-drink distributor of technological glitches, such as a dollar-bill tray that needs cleaning. The data will pass through Isochron's Network Operations Center to the vending-machine operator.
According to Joe Ochoa, vice president of strategic sales for Isochron, the VendCast system will pay for itself in the first year with lower labor costs and increased fill rates. Although he declined to be specific, Ochoa said the per-unit cost of the vending system would be less than US$1,000. The average cost of a cold-drinks vending machine is about $2,500. Commercial distribution of the VendCast system is expected by August or September.
"This is the beginning of the movement of pagers into things -- turning them into things that think," said Jim Page, Motorola's vice president of business development in the company's flex technology and systems division. "Pretty soon this kind of two-way data transmission will be in all sorts of field equipment. The days of the gas-meter man tramping thorough your bushes are about to end."
