so i had an idea......greenish arcade power consumption

squall280

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so i had an idea......greenish arcade power consumption

So I am sitting here having just opened my bar and turning on the machines..I glance at ice cold beer and think about it being on for the next 6 to 9 hours. I was wondering, with all these new advances in technology would it be reasonable to install some sort of sensor that would turn a machine on if someone stood in front of it for a few moments. As long as your playing it the game stays on. If there is no play for 10 minutes or so the machine shuts off until someone trips the sensor. I was thinking even adding an external button that once pressed powers a machine up but has the same principals of being shit down after being idel for a certain time frame. What do you guys think?
 
Probably the easiest way to do that would be to put a mat in front of the game with a pressure switch. When someone stood on the mat it would power on the game. After xx minutes it would turn off until someone else stood on the mat.

Wiring would be minimal and it would run directly from under the mat the game with little to no exposed wires.
 
Green

I like the green thoughts, but If your machines look dead to people then they are most likely not going to get played. I would just leave them on.
 
Electrical cost is minimal. Most games draw around 1 amp. Ends up being about $2 a month in electricity per machine with your 30 percent on schedule.

A large portion of that power can end up being "free" in the environmental sense. If your electricity is generated by geothermal, wind, a dam or a nuclear plant then tons of electricity just goes unused during the off peak hours (as in a good portion of the time your bar would be open if you are an evening only place).

Ice Cold Beer having no screen probably draws very little current at idle.
 
I did the calculations on my arcade with a Kill-O-Watt meter last fall. To run my arcade for 8 hours costs me $4. That includes a dozen vids and 2 pins.

Even if I had 8 hour parties every weekend, it still would only cost me about $70 a month in electricity. That's a drop in the bucket compared to the amount of beer I'd have to buy to host them :D

The other concern I'd have with a auto-on auto-off solution is the inherent problems you get when powering on and powering off machines. Some machines don't like power line interruptions. Most of the time, when a machine is going to break, it'll be during the power-up and power-down cycle.

Imagine the kids running back and forth in front of the machines?!? On off on off on off on off.

It'd be nice if we could design some sort of 'low power' state for the games. Where the juice is still there (to keep the components warm) but it's not generating high voltage and cpu activity. Like a regular PC.
 
I've thought about the green aspect of these things too but I can't have the games not in in my store/arcade. Having them on a abidance is half their benefit. But also I really don't see a giant change in my electric bill from before I had 27 games running all day.
 
I've visited a bunch of arcades in Mexico and some third world countries. What they do is put a light socket on the side of the machine. There's bad parts about it (takes a minute for games to boot on, somebody can turn the game off if your beating thier butt and more) but thats what they do.
 
Sure. There were a few games at an arcade I used to frequent that had motion sensors that turned on the game whenever somebody passed close by. They put them on the shooters with the huge monitors (Carnevil and a few others).

On the other hand, some games take a few minutes to boot. Most people won't stick around that long.
 
for the vids you could just wire it in before the iso for games that dont need an iso and just turn on the monitor.

the PCB does not draw much power so having it stay on would work fine. no boot up time required for them.

that way you could still have a master on and off for the games.
and only the monitors are triggered.

they use the most power anyway.

just my thoughts on the subject.

Peace
Buffett
 
another partial solution is led bulbs. in my galaxian, the marquee has two regular threaded bulb sockets and i dropped the cash on led replacements. next step...led + 90* reflectors for the coin slots.
 
another partial solution is led bulbs. in my galaxian, the marquee has two regular threaded bulb sockets and i dropped the cash on led replacements. next step...led + 90* reflectors for the coin slots.


That is true LED's would help bring down the power draw from the cabinet. IF you really wanted to reduce power consumption gutting cabinets and replacing old power supplies with modern ones that draw less energy might reduce the power bill some. The real big thing you could do is replace all the CRT's with LCD's as well since an LCD would definitely not draw as much juice as an old CRT monitor. But the cost alone per LCD would make it not worth doing. Plus I think like most here that LCD's look like crap for older games.
 
One benefit of having your games (if you live in a cold climate) is heat. My basement is less chilly during a fall/winter party if I have the games on.

On the flip side--if you are running air conditioning, running all of your games will cost the electricity to run the games plus whatever the residual heat from their operation does to the temperature of the room.
 
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