Congratulations to Maurus Rohrer from the BeWiTEC / INKA research group at the University of Applied Sciences Berlin (HTW)!

For a research project Maurus used the Abrantix MDB Converter to connect a coffee machine to a sophisticated user system. The goal was to investigate and implement a system that allows the user to easily make purchases with an NFC device and store these purchases in an accounting system. Also, the system was to memorise the product preferences of the user and automatically inform maintenance personnel about the machine status. More features were implemented and many more could be imagined. For example, users can sign up with any NFC capable device, be it a credit card, key fob or a badge. Users can also share preferences and recommend products to each other, or the sytem can suggest new products to a user based on their previous consumptions.

We’ve posted a video on our Youtube channel so you can see the system in action.

This is exactly what the MDB converter has been designed for: Enhance old MDB hardware with modern and smart technology! There are many vending machines out there and replacing them with modern machines is very costly. With the MDB converter it is easy to add complex and new technology at a low cost.

The MDB converter is a piece of hardware that can act as an MDB master or MDB peripheral device. It is fully MDB compliant and can easily handle the conversion of the 9 bit communication requested by MDB devices into an 8 bit protocol understood by regular PCs or any other RS232 capable device. Furthermore, it takes care of the polling and timing mechanisms of the MDB system, leaving you to deal with the important requests only. Simply connect your MDB system over the MDB converter to the serial port of your device and you are ready to go. With the sample source code that is provided with the SDK, you will be able to run any custom application on top, from a very simple test application to a full blown system as Maurus did.

Here is what Maurus says about it: The MDB converter from Abrantix helped me a lot for my research project. Using it meant that I could implement the coffee application successfully. Also I want to thank Abrantix for their technical support during my project. The machine has now been running successfully every day for 6 months!

If you have any questions or need more information, please leave a comment or contact us via our website.

Congratulations again to Maurus!

You can buy the MDB converter here.