1Up Arcade Coin Acceptor (wired or wireless)

BETA RELEASE

• This is a beta release.  I have printed this and it works well for me, but not sure if there are any errors in my readme and BOM.  

Intro:

• Emulating arcade games and miss the nostalgia of dropping quarters?  Kids think they're amazing at arcade games, but are just "spending" 400 quarters to beat Turtles in Time?  Here's a solution for you!

• This is a coin acceptor module that acts as a wired or bluetooth keyboard. 

• One coin acceptor to give credits for up to 4 different players!

  • It can be programmed to accept up to 4 different coins and trigger a credit for different players based on what coin is inserted.

  • For example: a quarter gives credit to p1, nickel gives credit to p2, penny credit to p3, dime credit to p4.

• It has 4 buttons on top. Front two buttons are for p1 start and p2 start (long press on p1 gives p3 start and long press on p2 gives p4 start).  Rear two buttons are save state and load state (long press on these buttons does quick save state and quick load state).

Updates:

• 2026-05-27

  • Beta 0.9 released.  Please let me know if anything is wrong.

BOM:

Printing:

• Material Shrinkage

  • You will be mating large printed parts with non printed parts.  If you don't compensate for shrinkage, your pieces may not line up with the screw holes (ie the case to the coin acceptor module). 

  • Print a few layers thick square and measure the printed dimensions versus the actual dimensions and then compensate in your slicer.

  • Common Shrinkage Amounts (yours may vary):

    • ABS - 0.58%

    • PLA - 0.3%

    • PETG - 0.5%

• Print Settings

  • 3 walls and 15% infill is plenty, however adjust as you see fit.  

  • parts should be oriented properly already.

• Buttons

  • The legs MUST be printed at 0.1mm layer height

  • glue the legs into the caps with superglue.

  • The button caps have separate bodies that you can separate in slicer to allow the multiple colors.

Wiring:

• I'm by no means an electronics expert.  If you have a better suggestion, let me know.

• The diode prevents the pico from back feeding the tp4056 when the pico is plugged into your computer.  If you can always remember to have the switch off when you plug the pico into your computer, you can omit it.  

• If you are doing a non-wireless variant, omit the doide, switch, tp4056, and the 18650.  Everything else is the same.

• Yes, this is very tight quarters and somewhat annoying.  Sorry about that :)

Firmware:

• Flashing

  • Hold the boot button when plugging in the pico to your computer

  • Unzip the appropriate firmware file (printables doesn't allow .uf2 files so I had to zip)

  • Drag the .uf2 file to the folder.

  • If wireless, reboot the pico, then connect via bluetooth to "1Up Coin"

  • If wired, plug the pico back into the computer and it should work immediately.

  • Profit :)

• Note - yes I used Claude to make these firmwares.  They are simple things, but they work well.

Programming the Coin Acceptor:

• There are many videos that demonstrate the programming of the coin acceptor.  Here is one:

  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plG0ZpbN--s

  • Note: he is using the switch set to slow pulse, but we want FAST pulses for our purposes.

• I used four coins for my setup (quarter, nickel, penny, dime). 

  • The quarter and nickel work very well, so I use those for P1 and P2. 

  • The dime and penny are a little more finicky, so I set those for P3 and P4. 

    • You will need to play with the sensitivity setting on the coin acceptor to get these to work perfectly.  

    • I recommend hooking the coin acceptor to a multimeter like in the video to get it all set up before putting it into the case.

Assembly:

• Case, wired and wireless

  • melt in the (2) m3 x 5m (d)  x 4mm (L) heatsets into the spots where the mt3608/pico mount will go.  

• Case - Faceplate Support

  • Melt in the (4) m3 x 5mm (d) x 4mm (L) heatsets into the faceplate

  • Add a drop of glue and press in to the (6) 6mm (D) x 3mm (L) magnets into the faceplate and coin drawer.  

  • Glue the faceplate into the case. 

    • This can be done last to make wiring and the other assembly easier.

• Pico/MT3608 Holder

  • Solder wires to the pico and mt3608, then attach them to the mounts with m2 screws.

  • leave extra lenght for the wires that go to the buttons and go to the switch.  Feed the extra length out the button/switch holes and solder the buttons/switches to the wire outside of the case.  There is plenty of space for loose wire around the coin acceptor so don't worry about having too much wire unless it's an aburd amount.

  • There's two holes for zip tie strain relief on the rear side of the holder.

• TP4056 Holder

  • Solder wires to the TP4056, then slide the TP4056 into slots.  Secure the TP4056 using the TP4056 back plate and (2) m3x8mm screws (these screw directly into plastic so don't overtighten).

• Battery Holder

  • Attach wires to the battery then use zipties to secure the battery to the battery holder. 

  • The battery/mount assembly is then glued to the depression on the left upper side of the case

• Multi Coin Acceptor

  • Plug in the connector the coin acceptor and attach the coin acceptor to the case using (4) m3 x 12mm screws.