Maker Club Vending Machine

Designed to work 24/7 and be secure against theft, they offer a fantastic, low-overhead way to sell things. Inspired by Zine vending machines and similar community-led vending machine projects, Etienne and I helped refurbish a broken vending machine into a community market stall for the club!

Because of the complex proprietary nature of vending machine embedded electronics, we had to treat the machine as a black box. We modified as little as possible to get the machine back to working, then patched into the keypad input to simulate item keypressses. This allowed us full control of the machine without using a relay for the 40 individual slots.

Because New Zealand is a largely cashless society, we wanted the vending machine to operate contactlessly. To do this, I implemented a simple CMS using Stripe's product APIs and handled all payments through a mobile checkout flow. Customers could scan a QR code, launch the web experience on their phone, and check out through the same app.

Importantly, our club can return 100% of profits directly to the Makers because overhead is so low. This means that the candles, jewellery, comics, and other products are often our member's first taste of making a profit from the things they've made. Our goal is to help students develop side hustles or try experimental art without having to worry about the details of how to sell it, and this vending machine helped us achieve that.