Wired commodity vending system

Abstract

A wired commodity vending system which comprises a plurality of slave stations each having an automatic vending machine including an outer door and an inner door and a controller for preparing and storing commodity sales data, and a master station for managing the slave stations to which the slave stations are commonly connected through data transmission lines so that the items of commodity sales data in the respective vending machines are processed by the master station. The wired commodity vending system processes the commodity sales data by specifying the address of the slave station through the master station to provisionally transmit the commodity sales data stored in the slave station from the addressed slave station to the master station according to the address in response to the control data transmitted from the master station to the slave station, re-transmitting the control data from the master station following reception of the commodity sales data, re-transmitting the commodity sales data together with operating status data prepared by the controller to the master station in response to the control data from the addressed slave station which received the control data, and collating and confirming the commodity sales data and control and status data repetitively received at the master station. The first transmitted commodity sales data is one of the number of sold commodities, by type of commodity, and the number of commodities, by type, presently retained in the vending machine, while the second transmitted commodity sales data is both the number of sold commodities, by type, and the number of the commodities, by type, retained at present in the vending machine.