Happens all the time on mine also..

Thanks, just was curious. I don't design power supplies either, but I do design transmitters and work with the power supply guys closely, so it's something I have to design around. Your 'buck-boost' comment just caught my attention!

That's only step #1, right?

Thanks Barry. Popped right up.

Not only does it happen all the time, but its especially annoying when you hit a seance target and instead of the ball bouncing off the flipper, the flipper collapses and the ball drains.

I had this during MB last night. An errant shot collapsed the flipper and drained all the balls before it could recover.

The flippers were getting spongy just before the collapse.

I am going to install the EOS switches. Its an easy $20 modification that would only take an hour to do. Pinballlife.com has all the parts readily available. Ask terry if he will make up a kit for this !

You will probably want them them later on.

This said however, installing EOS switches will not solve all of the problems. Only half of them.

The add on flipper power board mentioned here on pinside is a reality.
This will solve the core issues we are having with the 48v flipper system we have now.

Im my opinion its a must have part that should have been installed before sending out the games to consumers.

Please rosh BarryJ sell me an add-on flipper board as soon as possible! I love this game and it needs it.

rosh isn’t this one Ferret the software designer? Maybe that was a leap in my mind and he’s actually on another title. But you are still needed on game #1. (per this and other thread), Couple of bugs I see.

Issue 1) Played the f$&@ing game of my life.

Ball 1 over 1.5M but all the escape letters were lit & jail insert was not lit. Proceeded to get 4 magic hole visits and Jail Hurryups would not start.

Ball 2, I rocked it and started 10 modes, completing 7. Still no lit jail insert, although escape letters are lit. Magic shop trip do not trigger jail escape. I played escape ball save and was able to hit and light each target.

Ball 3 I had 6 Houdini letters lit. Escape targets were all lit and I completed 8 trips to magic shop. But no jail hurryups.

On my next game, the jail insert worked as intended.

Issue 2) probably 30% if the time I have film lit and I lock a ball, it fails to start film mode. It launches into trunk and life goes on. Letters are still lit so another locked ball and it may start. Film process should take highest priority over trunk ejects or trunk multiball.

That is gonna be one crowded expo for reveals.

My stage curtain quit working mid-game last night, power cycle didn't resolve it and it won't open in test mode either. I can hear and the captive ball move during that test and I've verified all the connections to the small board under the PF are good and solid. Will try to test with a DMM when I get time but if anyone has any ideas (I did send Barry an e-mail and will call in a ticket on Monday if I don't have it fixed by then) I'm open to suggestions.

The stage curtain and drop mech are on 2 separate servos.

The curtain servo sounds like its not operating.

I think it or a part of it is just loose.

Download the new manual if you havent already, its really nice!

http://s4.american-pinball.com/img/support/2018-8/AP_Houdini-Service-Manual_082318.pdf

Page 7-149 in the new manual has a good breakdown of the stage assembly.

The only 2 top screws make it easy to take apart for access.

Its possible that the servo is loose and not engaging the actuator properly? Might just need to be tightened down a bit.

Or the servo went bad or gears stripped or just unplugged? Open it up and take a look.

Yeah, I have the manual and it is pretty nice. I just did some basic testing and I believe the servo is bad, when compared to the servo for the captive ball I get very different resistance measurements between the pins going to the two motors and the curtain one is very, very high (~2.3M) whereas the captive ball one is about 16K.

Servo stripped the gears on the one we have here in the first week we had it back in Feb. Replacing the whole stage assembly is a drag, FYI. The replacement's been working perfectly ever since.

I havent looked at it yet, but it looks like a standard servo, they are fairly interchangeable.
You might find a suitable replacement at a r/c hobby shop in your area.

Or unplug it play the game and wait for a free replacement

I replaced my Smaug head servo with the metal gear type, should last forever (fingers crossed).

Pretty sure the servo is pre-programmed with the stopping points for "open" and "close" actions since there aren't sensors to tell the system where the curtain is. I don't think off-the shelf will work.

I thought about that too.
You may be right, but it seemed to me that the curtain calibration software made up the stop points based on the current draw or overvolt condition. This way you wouldnt need anything expensive or sophisticated as far as a little servo.
I wonder if rosh or anyone fron API can chime in.
It would be good to know, I may have to stock up on them if they are specialized.

I had a ball get trapped in the curtain. The software did not sense the overvolt condition and retract the curtain.
I dont know if that was a software bug or not.
I re-calibrated the stage, it hasnt happened since.

Its ok for Rosh and Barry take weekends off.
The servo must likely has built in "Stops".
Most likely mechanism specific.

Its ok to email Barry or open a ticket over weekend.

Tech support never sleeps.

LTG : )

The mech has 2 servo's that do very different things with different end points.
They both have the same part number in the manual.

If it were me (and its not obviously...) I would use centerless servo's and have the software control endpoints. Jams can be controlled via overvolt sensing.
Then have a calibration module to set and reset endpoints when neccessary and store the result.
Simpler and cheaper to build.

The R/C models have used this for years

Or use optos like JJP which increases fail points.

Thanks for the 'heads up' on the new manual, didn't know it was out. Wow, it's quite an improvement!! Kudo's AP!

I dont think it was advertised, It just came up on the support page.

Oddly lots of other links still point to the old preliminary manual on their site.

Soooo, I reached what I -think- was the master magician mode. I’m playing a game, and I must have gotten my 7th Houdini letter - and all of a sudden the game starts rocketing balls at me, the Flippers are reversed and I had to hold them down to flip (like the hard strsightjacket mode) and a TON of text is scrolling by on the screen - I didn’t know what happened!

Then I tried to keep up for a bit and “prove I’m a master magician” and when I have lost a few balls I eventually notice the screen is black, nothing on it. And I lose my last ball, hit 3 million, and the game goes dead. Shuts off, monitor says “no signal” and I realize it’s rebooting.!!! And no it did not save my score.

All I was trying to do was get all 5 film modes and I think the last film mode finished and I got the 7th Houdini letter and master magician started. I think ? Never got the film wizard mode.

If you guys havn't seen the front page.
Two big pieces of news this week.
First Josh mentions reveal of game #2 at expo.
Now today, Joe Balcer reveals game #2 is ....
Drum roll.....Oktoberfest..!
Im a little speechless on this one.
I look forward to playing it before passing judgement.

Have faith.

They took an escape artist who died 96 years ago and made a great pin.

Octoberfest is a weeks long carnival/party/celebration. They have a lot to work with beyond German maidens clutching 6 beer steins in each hand.

LTG : )

There's only 2 things I want to clutch from a German Maiden.
But now that you mention it, a "Tapper" type video mode would be cool.

Easily done. And could be family mode on or off for home owners.

LTG : )

How do I get cup and balls mode on Houdini?

People said the same about Dialed In and look how successful that game is. Let’s wait until we actually see a game before passing judgement.

Making a success of unlicensed pins again is a crusade worth supporting. I love a good licensed pin as much as the next guy, but we're now into an almost 100% licensed pin time period, and it's wearing a bit thin.

Any word if they will end Houdini production when game #2 starts?

They cant end production until they get me my flipper add-on board

Ask them at Expo. Maybe they can build two different games at the same time. Especially when they move to the new building.

LTG : )

It does seem 2 biggest items still needed to be fixed on Houdini are general flipper dropping during multiball and game rebooting during wizard mode.

I agree !

I hope there are real fixes before the get deeply involved with another project.

Im still a little stung waiting 2 years for Hobbit code updates, and they still arent done with it at JJP.

Im sure Oktoberfest is a great, fun concept. But its not for me.

I love my Houdini and want it polished and working 100% before they give up on me.

Hobbit will never be good enough because the base design just is bad. They can only do so much in software with a hardware mistake. We moved on from it years ago after only like 6 months. Beautiful pin, but just not fun and didn't earn on route. The newer software makes it better, but still not good.

Im optimistic they will make Hobbit as good a WOZ.
Up until version 5.0 code I had my doubts about WOZ.

But now? WOZ is really world class IMHO...

Hope is a good thing, but you have to realize that WoZ had a LOT of great hardware to work with. Hobbit has almost nothing to build excitement with. There's just too much wasted open space to allow for too many pop-up trolls that are more annoying than fun. Also, as the JJP train rolls on and there's more distance between Hobbit and their most-recent release, updating the code money-pit (declining or flatlined sales don't support new expansive code) becomes less attractive than giving more to WoZ or Dialed In, which are still performing (and WoZ was just re-upped on the license again last year).

There are so many great games now and in the near future, why waste time with one you don't like? You can always buy it again in the future if it does become what you hope. That philosophy helped me whittle an out of control home collection down to 2 or less at any given time. It's liberating.

Is there a way to eject all the balls form the game? Something in the adjustments or settings etc?

Sure, there is a Utility in the service modes called "Clear Houdini's Balls".

Not gonna be too much fun without being able to start any illusions, I guess I could just go for film modes and MBs but that would kinda be cheating. Brings up a point though, might be nice to have a "Curtain Disabled" setting that would just count shots to the curtain as being stage hits when it's set. Many games have this type of setting for mechs in order to keep the game earning coins when something is broken.

I did get a response from Barry yesterday but he's apparently at the Cle-Pin show so hopefully I'll get an idea on the replacement motor tomorrow.

I know exactly where you're at.
I have 22 games and am going to downsize to only 4.
So I'm selling them all off coming up to pay off my mortgage.
It will be quite liberating in many ways !

Did you find out if a standard servo will work?
I haven't pulled mine apart to see what servo they used.
That would be helpful info.

I would be extremely careful if you take it apart. If you put it the curtain back on differently, it won't work right because of the pre-programmed open/close points.

I'm going to wait to hear from Barry before I do anything else, thankfully I have eight other games to play!

I found the original servo:

http://www.revrobotics.com/rev-41-1097/

Great find!

Also there is a programmer for the servo.
Hope AP can sell them cheaper to us as revrobotics (for 30$) do, as a spare part.