Check all the connectors to make sure nothing came loose in shipping including at the circuit boards.

Sorry to hear this... Has to be something loose underneath..

Take glass off, lift playfield up and remove the metal cover revealing all electronics. Check for loose wires. If nothing is obvious, I'm sure Lloyd or someone with better hobbit experience will chime in shortly. Hate to hear your bad experience so far.good luck

The LEDs plug into boards fastened to the bottom of the playfield, start there and be sure connectors are on tight. Then look carefully around the rear of the metal box with all the boards, behind it and along side. Something came unplugged.

LTG : )

If you can't fix it, you should probably sell it (to me).

Not good that they would let it leave the factory like that. Hopefully it is just a connector issue.

The game went from eastern PA to Illinois down interstates that have not been repaired from winter. Ship happens.

Just received my Hobbit SE, everything seems to work except the playfield and ramp LEDs. I tried checking the connectors on the outside of the control board as well as several others that I thought may be more likely to have come loose.

Did you have to actually open up the control board and plug something back in? Which cable was it? I'm hoping we had the same one come unplugged, still no luck finding it.

Power off the game.

Examine all of the connectors coming out of the back of the big silver box (computer) under the playfield, use a flashlight if neccessary.

Check to see if any are disconnected or loose (tug on them a little?) Maybe unplug and re-plug them in one by one.

Carefully examine the wiring harness on the playfield itself, from the bottom to the top, gently comb through it with your finger tips, see if anything seems disconnected.

Turns out the problem was a micro usb cable that had come unplugged from the central circuit board with all of the grey led cables going into (go figure). It was hanging 3/4 of the way and I had missed it since I was focusing on tracing all of the colorful cables and not the plain black cable.

Thanks for your help LTG and Pinballinreno

Great news, glad you got it sorted out!

Same thing happened to me a week or so ago. Easy fix.

nothing better than tech supporting yourself and being able to fix the problem on your own. More and more on pinside need to start spending less time modding and more time learning how their games work. Kudos and a repair well done.

I called tech support...

but you still fixed it yourself. That's the difference.

Here are a few photos of the micro-usb location for the next person.

And on a personal note, the engineering underneath this machine is both awe-inspiring and terrifying.

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Thank you for the photos. Just had same problem on a trade

Just had the same thing happen to our
Hobbit-Smaug !
Had to replace the MAN Drop Target Bank on ours as ALL 3 Target Ledges were either broken completely off or falling apart from the Rivets being Over-Pressed cracking the DT Target Ledges - the M & A DT's wouldn't stay up when resetting & the N was getting pretty iffy.
Anyhow when I turned the Game back on NO PF Lights or GI Lights, all that was on was the 4 Spot Lights.
Mini USB looked fine but barely pushed on it and LIGHTS !
JJP already had Cable Ties on it, apparently they weren't snug enough as what you see sticking out was how much I was able to tighten them by.

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