Hacking a Digital Coke® Machine
This is for informational purposes. I do not suggest or condone using this information for the purposes of obtaining free soda or hassling the soda machine repair/refill technicians. Reverse engineered back in 2003/2004. Many new machines have had this system replaced by a newer revision of the control software and most of these functions no longer work.
Which Machines work?
All COCA-COLA product vending machines. These are the giant picture on the front models that show any of the following: Coke, Dasani (Water), Barq’s Root Beer, Vanilla Coke, Cherry Coke, Sprite, Evlan (water), Fanta, Sprite Remix, Minute Maid, Nestea, Power Aid, Seagram’s Ginger Ale, Simply Orange, or Tab. Of course anything Diet or Caffeine free works too. The machine must have an LED screen. Some of the older ones just allow the LED to be set to a price amount and won’t have the debug menu. You’re safer if the little LED is telling you something. Usually it will scroll a little message like “Ice Cold Cokes”.
Access to the system menu.
To gain access to the control menu, you must first determine what the button numbers are. The machine will have its buttons vertically (most common) or horizontally. If the buttons are horizontal, they will be in rows of 4. If the buttons are vertical then the Top button is number one, the next down from that is 2 and so on. If the buttons are horizontal they number one it top left, number two is to the right. The second row starts with button 5. The master access code is “4 2 3 1”. If you have entered the code correctly, you will see some text in the LCD display. Most of the times I tried this, the word ERROR appeared.
Navigating the menus
Working with the numbering above, button 1 is Exit/Back, button 2 is Up, button 3 is Down, button 4 is Select/Execute.
Options
I have seen two different versions. The one which was more common when I was researching was SALE, VER, EROR, and RTN. The least common was CASH, SALE, EROR, and RTN. I believe that the second one is now going to be the more common one as several years have elapsed since my research was done.
Cash
This is the machine coin and dollar in menu. It tells you how much money is in the machine, and by choosing the 12+ options you can determine what is the most popular item by sales. The Item Number is the loading slot inside the machine. It corresponds the the button on the face of the machine that you press to purchase the beverage.
Example: Slot 1 = Coke. When you are in the Cash menu choosing slot 1 will display the total number sold by dollar value
Sale
The cumulative sales total. This entry has the same options as CASH but can be reset by the technican when he reloads the machine.
Ver
Using this option displays a long seqence of number and letters. I believe that it is the machines OS or Firmware version ID as it doesn’t appear to vary much from machine to machine. I have recorded 4 different ones on the PSU Abington Campus during the course of my research. Since several years have passed, I am certain at least two or three more versions have been implemented.
Eror
This is a list of the number of times the machine has failed to do something. There are 8 different categories displayed: COLJ, VEND, DOOR, SELS, CHAR, ACCE, STS, and BVAL. While these are more or less useless since we do not have access to the internal workings of the machine, we can reset the values to 0 by holding in button 4 for three seconds.
COLJ is Column Jams, the vertical feed of the soda can/bottles is jammed.
VEND is Vend Mechanism Failure, the mechanical devices used to move the soda to the distributation tray has failed.
DOOR is Door Switch Indicator, if the door has been opened or the anti-tamper flap has been lifted without a sale.
SELS is Selector Button Error, one of the faceplate buttons has stuck in the depressed condition.
CHAR is Changer Failure, the device that returns your change is jammed or out of change.
ACCE is Acceptor Failure, either the coin or bill acceptor is jammed.
STS is Space to Sales Error, the machine appears to have sold more beverages than it has space to hold. this usually tells the technican that he forgot to reset the counter or that someone has reloaded machine.
BVAL is Bill Validator Error, the bill validator has jammed or cannot read any bills do to interference.
RetN
This exits the menu and returns the machine to a working state for sales. You can also exit at anytime by pressing the change return button.
There are more options but they need to be enabled by the internal computer or the control panel on the inside of the door. I do know what these options are, but have not been able to confirm or deny the accuracy of the following options. I learned of them from a helpful technician from a local vendor.
UPDATE:
I have recently discovered that if you hold down the coin return button on newer big button machines, that it will display what temperature the cans or bottles inside the machine are being stored at. it should return somewhere around 42F according to the technicians that I have spoken to.
EDIT – One of my friends has pointed me toward a website that confirms everything I have discovered and adds a few more. I-Hacked.com