Digitalizing slot machines

SUMMARY

Despite the emerging popularity of online gambling, slot machines maintain their popularity in the market. The slot machines market is expected to register impressive growth globally over the next few years. Some sources suggest there is potential to increase revenue by over 14 billion dollars until 2024, and these projections are not even the most optimistic ones. This comes as a result of softening government regulations across various regions together with the implementation of new technologies, wider selection of games, and more varied payment options, including card payments and Bitcoin.

CHALLENGE

The slot machines have a history of over a hundred years. The sudden growth in popularity over the recent years and digitalization required better technology for monitoring and maintenance of the equipment. While taking care of just a few machines in one building can generally be a simple task, nowadays vendors can have hundreds and thousands of them placed all over a country, or even a continent. A malfunction in a slot machine could cause great harm to casinos, from financial losses to lengthy and complicated lawsuits. Therefore, the owners are not willing to take any risks and look for solutions that would help to avoid such situations, or at least minimize the time and associated resources needed for resolving errors.

SOLUTION

A great percentage of slot machines that are currently in use are still analog. Since changing the whole infrastructure requires high financial and time investments, the vendors are looking for alternative solutions that could provide connectivity to legacy analog equipment and allow remote centralized game updates, monitoring, and control. RUT956 router is a great fit for such purpose since it has multiple digital and analog inputs/outputs, and RS232/ RS485 serial communication interfaces. It has 4 Ethernet ports and Wi-Fi for primary connectivity, while dual SIM is used for backup, ensuring connection continuity and easy deployment in remote locations.

A vast selection of VPNs provides high-level security. Remote Management System (RMS) enables easy centralized updates and monitoring of multiple machines conveniently from anywhere in the world. It also stores valuable data and helps for predictive maintenance. Error events allow for quick reaction and location detection to resolve the problem in the shortest possible time. Digitalising the analog machines also enable taking card or crypto payments safely and results in a better user experience, since they can use a payment method that is preferable to them.

TOPOLOGY

BENEFITS

• Multiple I/Os and serial communication interfaces – cost-efficient digitalization of legacy machines.
• Connection continuity – due to multiple wired and wireless connectivity options, and failover functionality, the slot machines are always online, even when the primary connection is lost.
• Remote management – easy game and system updates, quick error detection, cost-efficient maintenance.
• Location detection – RUT956 is equipped with GNSS for location services and time synchronization, allowing to precisely detect where and when a specific problem occurred and resolve it as quickly as possible.
• Data collection – allows staying up to date and making well-informed decisions as it comes to particular games’ popularity and predictive maintenance.

WHY TELTONIKA NETWORKS?

Teltonika Networks offers a product that has multiple connectivity options and a possibility to connect to analog and serial interfaces. This significantly reduces the costs that would otherwise be required for changing the whole slot machine infrastructure. Remote Management System enables monitoring and maintenance from anywhere in the world, account control, game updates, and data collection. Casinos or vendor companies can significantly save on time and financial resources and make data-driven future business decisions.