JPH0363798A - External reset system for article lending machine - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To recover the machine trouble of an automatic lending machine without opening the door of a device main body by preparing a clerk card on which card information other than that of member cards is recorded and inserting this card at the time of temporary stop due to abnormality of the article lending machine to input a control signal which resets the temporary stop of the machine. CONSTITUTION:The clerk card on which card information other than that of member cards is prepared, and this clerk card is inserted at the time of temporary stop due to abnormality of the article lending machine to input the control signal which resets the temporary stop of the machine. Since a card reader 28 reads the clerk card and a control part 24 is operated to release the error mode in accordance with card information recorded on this card, the error mode is easily reset from the external and clerk's operations are not necessary at all. Thus, the use of keys and the door opening work are excluded to improve the security on the key operation and cash in the device, and the trouble is easily and quickly recovered without complicated operation.

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION (a) Field of Industrial Application This invention relates to an external reset method in an article rental machine such as a video rental device that rents out video cassettes based on the insertion of a card on which a membership card number is magnetically recorded. Regarding.

(B) Conventional technology The operation of the video rental device in the above example is as follows:
When the customer inserts their membership card and operates the function key in rental mode, the user is allowed to select the video cassette, and once the selection is confirmed, the video cassette is ejected and the card is returned by paying the fee. Ru.

In addition, when returning the video cassette, if the customer inserts their membership card and operates the return mode function key, the video cassette can be returned. will be returned.

By the way, in this video rental device, when a device failure occurs that requires a staff member to handle, the conventional response is to follow the recovery procedure guidance displayed on the device's display or the manual, etc. During the recovery operation, it is necessary for the personnel to enter a signal into the device to enter the recovery operation, and the personnel key is usually used for this purpose. To use this attendant key, if the key switch is located outside the main body of the device, it is operated from the outside; if it is inside the main body 101 of the device as shown in FIG. 4, first unlock the door key switch 102 and then After opening 103, the key switch 100 is operated, and execution is performed according to the screen displayed on the display 104.

(c) Problems to be Solved by the Invention However, in the above-mentioned one-person key system, the key can be easily copied and there is no security, which poses problems in terms of device operation, and the key switch 100 is exposed to the outside. In such a case, the type of key for the article lending device must be changed, which creates manufacturing complexity. In addition, since cash is contained in the coin/banknote unit inside the device body 101, the door key becomes the cash key in the type equipped with an internal staff key switch, and for security reasons, the holders of the door key and staff key must be carefully selected. However, there were also operational problems.

Furthermore, when operating the staff key, this key operation inputs a signal to the main body 101 of the device to shift to recovery, thereby displaying the menu screen on the display 104, pressing the staff reset key on the screen instruction, and returning to idle after recovery. It was necessary to go through complicated steps such as changing the settings back to .

In view of the above-mentioned problems, the present invention aims to provide an external reset method that can recover from a device failure in an automatic lending machine without opening the door of the machine body or using an attendant key.

(d) Means for Solving the Problems This invention provides an article lending machine that automatically lends out articles by a lending operation associated with the use of a membership card, in which an attendant card has card information different from that of the membership card recorded thereon. The present invention is characterized by an external reset method for the article lending machine, in which a control signal for resetting the equipment temporary stop is input by preparing a machine and inserting the attendant card when the article lending machine is temporarily stopped due to an abnormality.

(E) Effect According to this invention, when a device failure occurs, the card reader reads the staff card by inserting the staff card into the main body of the device from the card insertion slot, and the card information recorded therein is read. Since the control unit works to cancel the error mode from the
There is no need to operate the door key at all.

(f) Effects of the invention Therefore, the use of keys and door opening operations can be eliminated, and the security of key operations and cash inside the device is improved, and the device can be reset to a temporarily stopped state by simply inserting an attendant card. This allows for simple and quick recovery without the need for complicated operations.

(g) Examples An embodiment of the present invention will be described in detail below based on the drawings.

The drawing shows a video rental device as an example of an article rental device, and in FIG. The title picture of an expensive video cassette is displayed in the display area. On the other hand, each video cassette is set with the work number and shelf number on which it is stored, and each of the aforementioned display areas itself forms a switch, and when this display area is suppressed, the title picture is displayed. The work number and shelf number of the indicated video cassette are input.

In the lower right corner of the title image display section 12 mentioned above,
A video cassette take-out and return port 13 is formed.

The front panel 11 at the bottom of the title picture display section 12 described above has a storage section 15 for a work list book 14, and this work list book 14 contains other information that cannot be displayed on the title picture display section 12. The work number and shelf number are collected according to the work name of the video cassette.

A display 16 made of a CRT is provided on the upper right side of the front panel 11 described above, and the display 16 displays necessary items such as operating procedures or selection items for the customer.

Function key 17 located at the bottom of the above-mentioned display 16
... specifies the set mode such as lending mode, return mode, return/rent mode in which lending is done at the same time as return, and furthermore, the numeric keypad 18 at the bottom is used to select the video cassette from the work list editor 4 mentioned above. Enter the work number when selecting and borrowing.

A membership card given to the customer is inserted into the card insertion slot 19, and rental data is magnetically recorded on this card in addition to unique identification data of the customer such as the customer's membership code number.

The coin slot 20 and the bill slot 21 are used to insert coins to pay usage fees or additional charges, the change slot 22 is used to dispense change, and the receipt slot 23 is used to dispense receipts.

Incidentally, in addition to the general membership card used by customers, the card used in such a video rental device 10 includes an attendant card held by an employee of the store where the device 10 is installed. Ru. This staff card has the same shape as a membership card, but the magnetically recorded card information has a signal recorded therein that identifies it as a staff card.

For example, the card type codes recorded on membership cards and staff cards are different, and when a card reader (described later) reads these card type information, the control unit can make a determination based on the card type code contents of the card information. , an attendant card works to reset the device's paused state.

FIG. 2 shows a control circuit of the video rental device [10], and the control section 24 is composed of, for example, a CPU.
includes a ROM 25 and a RAM 26, the ROM 25 stores a program for controlling the various parts in order to drive and control the video rental apparatus 10, and the RAM 26 stores necessary data and constitutes a rental file.

The keyboard unit 27 is connected to the title screen display section 12 mentioned above.
switches, a function key 17, and a numeric keypad 18, and input operation signals from these switches and keys.

The card reader 28 reads data magnetically recorded on the card inserted into the card insertion slot 19, that is, the membership card given to the customer, or magnetically writes new data, and also reads the staff card. Let's do it.

The money processing unit 29 determines the authenticity and denomination of the coins or bills inserted into the coin input slot 20 and bill input slot 21, calculates the amount of money inserted, and releases change to the change output port 22 when necessary. .

The printer unit 30 prints out rental data including usage fees and additional fees on journals and receipts.
The receipt is discharged into the receipt discharge port 23 mentioned above.

Furthermore, a cassette loading/unloading device 31 is connected to the control unit 24, and in order to enable error handling using conventional key operations, a door key switch 32 and a door 3 shown in FIG.
An attendant key switch 34 exposed when the door 3 is opened is connected.

Next, the processing operation for external reset will be explained with reference to the flowchart of FIG.

When the video rental apparatus 10 temporarily stops due to equipment failure or momentary stop, the cause of the error is displayed on the CRT display 16. When the door 33 in Fig. 1 is opened and executed as a recovery measure for the cause of this error, the conventional error processing will be performed, and in this case, no card insertion will be accepted (steps nl, n2).
.

On the other hand, when an attendant card is inserted into the card insertion slot 19, the card reader 49 reads the card information of the attendant card, and the control unit 24 determines whether or not it is a regular attendant card based on the card type code. . However, if the cause of the equipment failure of the video rental apparatus 1o is in the card reader 28, an external reset operation cannot be performed, and conventional error handling must be relied upon. Furthermore, if it is determined that the staff card is not a genuine one, the card will be returned after displaying that fact (steps n3.n4゜n5.n6).
.

If the attendant card is normal, the card is returned, while the control unit 24 commands an error mode reset operation to perform error recovery and return to the initial state (
Step n7. n8. n9゜nlO, n1l).

An example of error processing executed by following the steps described above is when the effect is not sufficient. In other words, if a coin jams in the coin unit because a customer accidentally inserts a deformed coin when inserting coins during a cassette lending operation, the video rental device 10 will guide the operation of the return lever with the display on the CR7 display 16. If the operation is not performed because the customer is not accustomed to the operation, the device 10 determines that there is no customer who should operate the operation, temporarily stops due to the coin jam, transmits the failure occurrence online, and issues an alarm. The occurrence of the failure is notified to the person in charge at the installation location of the video rental device 10. As a result, the clerk presses down the coin return lever based on the failure details displayed on the CR7 display 16 to remove the defective coins, inserts the clerk card into the device 10 as in the flow described above, and performs a reset operation. and restore it.

In this way, in order to reset the temporary stop caused by a device failure of the video rental device 10, the door 3 of the device main body
3, the security of the cash inside the device main body is improved and the operability is improved.

In addition, in the above-mentioned embodiment, external reset was possible only by inserting the attendant card, but insertion of this attendant card,
External reset may be made possible by inputting a password using the numeric keypad 18 and matching the ID code. Furthermore, the present invention is not limited to the video rental apparatus 10 of the embodiment, but can be widely applied to other article rental machines.

[Brief explanation of drawings]

The drawings show an embodiment of the present invention, in which Fig. 1 is a front view of a video rental device, Fig. 2 is a block diagram of a control circuit, Fig. 3 is an operation flowchart during external reset processing, and Fig. 4 is a conventional one. FIG. 2 is an internal diagram of the video rental device for reset processing. 10...Video rental device 16...Display unit 24...Control unit 19...Card insertion slot 28...Card league 28...Sword-Dreamer Figure 3

Claims (1)

[Claims] (1) In an item lending machine that automatically lends out items by the lending operation associated with the use of a membership card, an attendant card with card information different from that of the membership card recorded above can be prepared to temporarily dispose of items due to an abnormality in the item lending machine. An external reset method for an article lending machine that inputs a control signal to reset the machine's temporary stop by inserting the attendant card when the machine is stopped.