Paltronics’ One Link 3E system offers a total package for casino floor management
On a multi-media gaming floor populated by an array of equipment suppliers, casino operators face a challenge in coordinating and managing their technology. Paltronics says its One Link 3E system—now driving the floor at Galaxy Macau—has the solutions. Ali Jomaa, General Manager for Paltronics Australasia, explains the details.
Inside Asian Gaming: What’s new about One Link 3E?
The interface to the One Link 3E system is all Web-based, which means you can access the functions from any Flash-enabled device, such as an Android tablet or phone. From your Web interface you can control all the slots on your floor in terms of the jackpots, all the media distribution and all the content creation.
We’ve moved on from where we used to have jackpot controllers and interface cards and lots of devices to drive everything. We now have a small interface card in the machine, and the server. Everything is Ethernet-based. It’s reduced the complexity of the system greatly. And once you run Ethernet, you get so much more power in terms of what you can do. For example, I can log on to the little interface card itself. I can go and see exactly what’s going on, on that device. I can have a look at the configuration as it’s been reported by the machine. Everything is in the real time.
So, even for SAS [Slot Accounting System protocol], for example, I can go and view the [data] packets coming back and forth between the [gaming] machine and our system. So if there are any problems, usually it’s identified easily from the back end. There’s no need to go over the machine, open it up, and put a whole bunch of analysers and stuff in it. That was what we used to do quite a bit in the old days. We can use this method on pretty much every device on the system.
Everything is downloadable from here in terms of firmware. So software upgrades are all centrally controlled. All the jackpots are controlled from here. So we can go and configure, modify, adjust and do just about everything to the jackpots centrally. We don’t need to shut the floor down. Everything is done seamlessly.
Who’s using this?
The latest system, which is 3E, is driving Galaxy Macau. And the media content creation component of the system is being used at Marina Bay Sands in Singapore. In Singapore, they’re not using the slots component, as that simply wasn’t available at the time they opened. We also have around 20 other casinos around the world running this at the moment.
What reasons did Galaxy give for choosing One Link 3E?
The simplicity of the system. Peter Johns [VP of Electronic Gaming at Galaxy Macau] had come from MGM [Macau] and was familiar with the old [One Link] system and knew all the components. The old system is still a good product, and is still driving a lot of casinos. But the new system allows us to control the floor with half the number of [One Link] devices.
Is the One Link 3E interface easier for the casinos to manage?
It’s much simpler in terms of having the Web interface. That means they can use the system via any of their devices, they don’t have to buy additional licences every time they want another PC. There are no [individual] jackpot controllers, which means it’s reduced the cost of the system quite a bit. Expanding their system became easy, running wide area jackpots became easy.
How does One Link 3E communicate with all the different gaming devices on the floor?
We have what’s called self-discovery. In the past, when you had to configure a casino floor of say a thousand machines, you literally had to go and type a thousand machines into the system one by one. With One Link 3E, you simply plug in the interface card. It does the auto-configuration directly from the machine, so it picks up all the denominations, all the progressive levels and the identities.
Is communication via G2S? [Game to System, the Gaming Standards Association’s common technical standard.]
The new communication protocols that are being adopted by new casinos and gaming machine manufacturers are currently being built into the system. The current system is SAS and ASP [a.k.a. A Simple Protocol]. The auto-discovery process self-configures the system. So if you have a thousand machines and you plug in the one card in each gaming machine, you’ll see all the machines pop up automatically on the system. And then from there, it’s simply just a question of setting the parameters, authorising those and deciding how many of the devices you want on the [One Link] system.
The same thing applies to all the media devices on the floor. If you have a couple of hundred end points you simply plug it in, the system auto-discovers and tells you what kind of configuration that display is plugged into. It will tell you what orientation the screen is; what the screen resolution is, and so you can easily identify where those screens are.
Tell us more about the media management functions.
With the media management applications there are a lot of diagnostics in terms of what you can do to identify issues on the floor. An example is the ability to take a screenshot [via the Web interface]. I can go and take a picture of exactly what’s running on a gaming device screen. And all of those devices—whether they be two-inch screens or 42-inch screens—all sit on the media system and they’re all controlled from One Link 3E.
In the past, if you wanted to see what was showing on a device screen and you were out in the server room at the back of the casino, you literally had to get up, run out to the casino floor, have a look, and say ‘Okay, that’s the right thing’. There was all that effort just to be sure.
Now I can just click and identify exactly what’s there. I can go to the display attributes. If I want to rotate a display 180-degrees because someone’s installed it incorrectly, I don’t have to go and get someone to go and unbolt all that display and turn it the right way round again. I’ll just go and tell the screen display to rotate itself. It’s little simple things like that.
And this can apply not just to gaming device screen management, but to signs all over the casino?
Every bit of signage you can think of in the casino, you can manage from the system—whether it be just for marketing purposes, for running jackpots, for minimum and maximum [Table] signs, all our table latest displays—all of those you can control from here.
Tell us something about the media content creation and editing function of One Link 3E.
Our program editor is one of our biggest advances on the system. In the past it would take an engineer a whole day to develop a bit of animation. Now, even people without any engineering experience or even any computer experience can create content literally in seconds.
Everything is drag and drop. When it comes to having multilingual fonts, these are all built into the system. It doesn’t matter where I go in the world. If I want to do say some Chinese fonts, I can actually just load those from the system. You’d be amazed how much positive difference One Link 3E makes to operating a casino efficiently.
