Using a PIC16F877A microcontroller and some high current electronics a grid of windows was turned into a huge LED display. Seems like students at MIT have lots of tech fun!

“The Simmons LED Display is a home-made two-story high 6×6 array of windows outfitted with ultra-cool Luxeon LXHL-LR3C Royal Blue LEDs. It is located in the exercise room of the architecturally infamous Simmons Hall, a residence hall designed by Steven Holl that opened in 2002 for MIT’s undergraduates. (Each floor is three windows high and the overall design of the building is inspired by a sponge.) It can be seen from most of Briggs Field and Dorm Row at MIT, thus making for a convenient announcement board. It follows from a vision that many Simmons Hall residents have had in the past: to turn the waffle-like arrangement of windows into working pixels.”

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Looks like the average joe can now read about Coke machine programing. Seems that the service manual is now readily available. When are companies going to learn to guard this material better? Go here to see a video of someone getting into the machine menu.

“COIN PAYOUT ROUTINE

This function allows you to dump coins from the coin mechanism.
Press select button 4 to enter mode and the lowest coin value dispensable will show on the display.
Press select button 2 or 3 to scroll through the different coin values available.
Press and hold select button 4 to dump the coins whose value is shown on the display.
Press select button 1 will return to “CPO.”

Via: TechScoopNews

When the manuals are provided online and the default passwords are not changed on most system when installed you are just asking for problems. I think the main problem with this system is that you can enter programming mode straight from the keypad, this is convenient however it would be much more secure if the operator was required to unlock the front of the machine and flip a service switch.

Download the manual (10 MB PDF)

Also with default passwords of Master = 555555 Service = 222222 Operator = 111111 you are asking for problems. Here are a few more links with information of this blunder.
Link 1, Link 2, Link 3, Link 4

I wonder how long it will take for other manufactures such as Triton to learn from this. Lilricky mentioned in the Digg post that this manual also contains master passwords, looks like this problem might be ongoing!

“I just confirmed that this does in fact work. We hit the market down from the office, I put the machine into admin mode with holding down ——, picked administration menu, and entered in the default —— and voila.

By this time I was shitting myself and decided to walk away. So I exited out of the mode leaving the machine’s settings unchanged. What I also noticed is that you can easily get a list of customer transactions as well as it is a menu option when you hold down ——.

This machine was a Triton but owned/managed by E-Trade (at least that’s the sign that was on it.). So yeah … it works.”