NIMnum machines for advertising

Discussion Promotion Ideas
#1

NIMnums

Candy machines that accept NIM not so much for making a profit, but to bring awareness to the public of Nimiq.SX466

Why candy machines?
The price for a portion of candy is pretty small, so even a passersby could aquire the NIM needed to make a purchase immediately.

How would they earn NIM

We’d have an app advertised on the NIMnum machine, where people could do various activities to earn NIM IE surveys, watch an ad, or simply downloading the app.

As well as they could use the app to earn NIM to use on these machines later.

I’d like to see what you all think as far as what the hardware and software needs would be to accomplish such a project.

1 Like
#2

Some additional thoughts…

Ideally, the transactions would need to be off chain, people aren’t going to want to hang out for a minute for a handful of M&Ms.

It would be great if we could make this where it would operate without using outside power. To keep power usage low we could keep alot of mechanics of typical machines, where the user has to rotate the dispenser. The machine would just operate a locking mechanism. We could let the user know its ready to be turned with a simple LED indicator.

Im not familiar with how many watts it takes to run Wi-Fi capabilities or what energy the locking mechanism would consume. But if we could power it with a solar panel, these could go anywhere.

In fact, if the machines can be programmed to hold codes that are used to allow the mechiansm to unlock we could go without internet connection to the machine as well. The vendor could just upload new codes to the machine. The app could send the user the code to enter for their candy.

1 Like
#3

Sounds like fun actually. So you envision it as an onboarding activity with physical reward, candy that is. Would work for me. :slight_smile:

#4

Exactly that, hardest part would be fabricating the machines. Once a model was made though, could easily be replicated.

#5

Maybe I take it too far now, but I remember @Richy also talking about having a hackathon at some point creating a lock that can be paid with NIM, and thus I think, ideally, how about creating a device that can support “all” those ideas. It needs to be six things, be able to get online while at the same time being as cheap, small and low-power as possible, being configurable, e.g. via USB or bluetooth, with at least two parameters: address and amount required - and hack-proof. Then, the device would turn out an output pin for a short amount of time (maybe a third parameter) when it receives this amount on the given address. Then this device could be the base to create all sorts of devices and machines with. Actually, having such a well-defined base would allow a custom PCB to be designed and mass-produced making cheap. :slight_smile: … I really think this could be cool, e.g. as piggyback PCB and standalone. I don’t have the technical know-how, but if we get enough ideas using such a board, the requirements for them from all those ideas, and the people behind those ideas together it might be a very interesting base to start a project and could also be considered for community funding!

2 Likes
#6

I wouldn’t say you took it too far, you took it right where it needs to be.

With smart phone tethering capabilities, providing internet to the lock wouldn’t be too difficult.

Making sure it has power though, would be an issue each use case would need to tackle.

As far as use cases for such a PCB there are many! Gym lockers, rental bike racks, safes, Hotel room doors and of course candy machines :slight_smile:

1 Like
#7

Hmm, just having USB could connect the PCB to WiFi or a phone, and also be used to configure, even to charge maybe. Time to get the hardware guys involved. :slight_smile:

1 Like
#8

After discussing with “the hardware guys”: a first prototype can be built with a raspberry pi using the Rust client. It would be cool to just need a microcontroller, but we realized that porting the code to run on a MCU without an OS Is a huge effort, so, not for now. Instead, using a raspberry pi is very straight forward actually, but a bit more costly.

About the overall idea: using the faucet could work as onboarding concept: create account, get a few NIM, use those on the machine, receive a little candy.

2 Likes
#9

Was looking for some information online as far as what kind of power consumption a rasberry pi has, turns out around 3 watts at full use of the cpu. As well as I came across this webpage

What if Nimiq out sources the hardware portion of the project to one of these YouTubers, one of the users on the list is Tinkernut and he has ~500k subs. They could do a video showing them fabricating the machine for their channel. You’d have someone familiar with Rasberry PI customization as well as exposure for Nimiq to their audience. I imagine it comes down to how much control Nimiq wants over the design, as well as possible costs to have the Youtuber take on the project.

Just a thought.

3 Likes
#10

Interesting point actually! I’ll bring it up internally and post back here. :slight_smile:
I guess the first question would be “what to offer in return”

#11

Short update: From what I understand, using a Pi should be “fairly easy” - as it comes with the entire software stack. The goal would be to have a little hardware component that can be integrated into any kind of vending machine or into all the other interesting ideas that were flying around… and for that, the price is the issue :confused:

1 Like