Inside Asian Gaming

INSIDE ASIAN GAMING | January 2012 16 Paltronics O n 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 identifiedeasily fromtheback 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. “Once you run Ethernet, you get so much more power in terms of what you can do.” 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, whichmeans 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. One Love Paltronics’ One Link 3E system offers a total package for casino floor management TheWeb-based interface for Paltronics’ One Link 3E system