Case Studies

Helping to increase player interaction.

Commercial Gaming

Summary

Utilizing a System on Module (SOM) to speed development, Beacon EmbeddedWorks helped this gaming customer to develop and deliver technology that monitors player behavior on casino machines – urging them to play longer.

Challenge

The advancement of connected technologies has created the expectation that every consumer interaction is personalized. Customers expect to receive only information that is relevant to them. Companies use this as an advantage to send targeted messages to those consumers who are most likely to take action based on a number of different factors. More intelligent technology can facilitate more effective communication by providing an understanding of customers’ through their past purchases, behavior, and location. When this gaming company came to us to help them increase the average revenue per user (ARPU) in casinos, they knew that personalized messages and targeted offers would help them achieve this goal. Our team was commissioned as an engineering and manufacturing partner to help bring this solution to casinos across the United States.
The customer determined that casino issued player cards would be the personalization vehicle. Casinos issue frequent visitor cards to players to help keep track of their winnings and as a rewards system. Players already swipe these cards on the machines they play. Working with the customer, we would need to implement a solution to tap into this player information database to collect data, analyze it, display custom offers based on the player’s history.

Solution

The Beacon EmbeddedWorks apps and software engineering teams worked closely with the customer’s engineering team throughout the development process. Together, we developed a custom baseboard that integrated with a Beacon EmbeddedWorks System on Module (SOM). The SOM was a quick to market solution that would deliver many of the primary functions for the final device. Among other functions our SOM was responsible for the LCD display, card reader, and the firmware for the user interface. The SOM would also provide the required Ethernet capabilities that would connect the game machine to the casino’s server system that housed all of the player’s information. Using this connection, the device would be able to read the player’s frequent visitor card to determine what offers would appear on the game’s display based on their history.
We provided the tested SOM and baseboard to the customer to integrate into their final product.

Results

The device was introduced and implemented in millions of casino games around the world. The personalized messages offered players game credits and hotel upgrades to urge them to continue playing; ultimately increasing ARPU. Committed to the solution’s prolonged success we continued to provide sustained engineering support to deal with any obsolescence issues throughout the produce lifecycle. When it came time to upgrade their technology, the customer came back to Beacon EmbeddedWorks to help with development. We then built a migration path with a new SOM-LV allowing the customer to easily make updates to future product generations without having to remove existing hardware. Beyond simply implementing the customer’s desired solution, our team made certain to ensure the update process would be as quick and efficient as possible.

Other News

Beacon EmbeddedWorks launches new System on Module based around NXP’s i.MX 8M Mini and Nano processors. The SOM delivers integrated security, low power consumption, small form factor, and the powerful processing necessary for video and graphics applications. As a high performance solution for the most demanding applications, the Beacon EmbeddedWorks comes fully tested and certified so your project can hit the ground running.

For more information download the i.MX 8M Mini and i.MX 8M Nano product brief.