Innovate 2010 developers’ conference, he showed off a gumball machine that lets people use their smartphone to scan a barcode instead of fishing for change.

Tanaka and his team put together their gumball machine using an ordinary mechanical vending machine, an Arduino processor, a WiShield and a few other smartly chosen basic parts.

Scanning the QR barcode sets the gumball machine in motion. Then the customer gets a Twitter notification that their PayPal payment has gone through and how much they’ve been charged. On the merchant side, Tanaka showed off an instant payment-notification system using an LCD display.

Candy is cute and “gives good demo” (as Steve Jobs puts it), but I can easily imagine 101 even better uses for a simple electronic payment system like this where cash is short and speed is essential. Here’s a short list to get you started:

• parking garages
• public transit
• toll booths
• grocery checkout
• gas stations

In short, anywhere you need to be on the move and would rather not whip out your wallet.

Story via the Arduino Blog and Helablog.

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See Also:

• Will the Internet of Things Be Open or Closed?
• Spime Watch: Shipping Containers and the Future Internet of Things …
• Laser Etched QR Codes: Digital Graffiti For Gadgets
• Amazon iPhone App Adds Barcode Scanning
• Belly Up to the Bar Code

Authors: Tim Carmody

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