The thought didn’t escape me, seems appropriate really.

No work on the machine today, too many things around the house to do, and customer orders to work on. But I did get the remainder of the switch and driver boards ordered today. I also have a box of stuff on the way from Marco as well, just a few bits and pieces, and a generic set of white rubbers to use for now. Eventually I'll be doing all colored Titan rings, but I need to slow down the expenses on this project for now.

-Hans

Round standup targets have been found, and should be here in a few days. Got a 3-pack on e-bay with 2 red and 1 green, original Gottlieb round targets. That'll work nicely.

-Hans

Could definitely use them if you have them, sure!

Ok, more progress today, I got the 2nd half of the main/upper playfield solenoids wired up and running. I also installed a set of rubbers as well to let me start adjusting switches for proper activation I've got a couple things that will need a little bit of work, and one really annoying thing I'll have to deal with, so here's a rundown of the current problem list.....

The big problem is I made the wiring too short! The harness for that solenoid bank barely reaches where I have the solenoid driver board right now, and it's already basically right above the neck on the cabinet. Everything reaches just fine as long as the playfield is installed.... but if I pull it out at all to work on it I'm coming up short. That's going to be an annoying fix and I didn't really have much wire on hand. So.... whoops! Crap happens and I'll get it straightened out.

Then there's the minor issues. The VUK from the main to the upper playfield is too weak. I've got an overly sensitive pop bumper that fires on pretty much any other autofire coil activating. I've also got a loud buzz coming from the transformer at times that I'll have to sort out.

One more big/little thing I've got to take care of in the near future. There's a LOT of coil activity running off one bank, so I'll have to increase the fusing a bit to compensate, currently a 2A slow-blow fuse will eventually pop if things are too active on that bank. Two kicker targets and two pop bumpers are pretty lively for sure. Not sure if I should bump up a half amp or full amp on that bank, the rest I'll keep at 2 amp until I see reason to increase. Otherwise, I forgot how damn fast this game really was with all those kicker targets and pop bumpers. It's making me rethink my music choices.

The rest of my solenoid and switch drivers are arriving in a couple days. So hopefully in about a week I'll have full flipper control, running all three playfields, with transitions between them all working. At that point I'll start doing some video updates.

I was thinking of a variation of that theme actually. It's irked me about how I was going to work the knocker coil into the wiring harness, and there's a couple surprises I'm working on that also necessitate additional coils that are not playfield mounted. So I'm very strongly considering an intermediate fuse/breakout board for the coil harnesses inside the cabinet.

So instead of dragging all the coil wires up from the playfield to the neck, they'll go to this other board instead that I'll put on the back wall. From this board, the wiring will then go up into the head box and that harness can handle the distribution among the driver boards. If it works out well enough, it'll also dramatically reduce the number of connectors to remove when I pull the head for transport, assuming I don't modify it to add a hinge. I just don't know yet what I'm going to do on lighting, so it's too early to make it.

I'm also going to have to do a layout for a custom power distribution board as well. My power wiring is turning into spaghetti soup.

-Hans

Knock two problems off the list.
VUK is now firing strongly, and kicking the ball up from the main playfield just fine. A bit of cleaning, and a bit of software tweaking, took care of it. Transformer is also no longer vibrating. I left something sitting on top of it that was making the noise.

I spent this morning establishing the proper 'shots' for the base mode on the main and upper playfields. So all scoring switches on those are doing their normal un-lit default scores. Upper playfield drop target bank is also properly established in the software as well, so it's resetting on completion and during game/machine start conditions.

I've been working on the layout for my power distribution board as well. I just can't decide if I want to put the rectifiers on there, or leave them where they are currently. I'll probably have to do at least one more revision of it in the future so I think for now I'll just leave them as-is. But I did put a number of fuses on it for every power circuit that passes through the board. Just a few more tweaks and I'll be ordering that the next day or so.

I'm going to have to make those decisions on lighting in the very near future I think. I may also be ready to start integrating some sound. Should probably get some speakers.

-Hans

I'd be interested in reading that one, I'll have to try and find the issue or a scan of it. Would be neat to know what the original intentions were and if the playfield artwork still aligns with it or not.

Just ordered some more wire today for the flipper power and returns. I want to have a different color for the 38v solenoids as opposed to the 24v solenoids. I've basically run out of color choices on solid wire, so starting to get striped wire instead. Price goes up a lot with striped wire that's for sure.

-Hans

Gutz is an awesome pinsider

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Latest batch from Multimorphic. These will finish my switch and solenoid circuits. Just waiting on some more wire to do the flippers but can start installing these now.

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All the switches are set up now, just need to do a hair of pop bumper adjustments.

The VUK needs to be tweaked before testing the remaining playfield solenoids though. Just a hair out of whack.

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Awwwwww Yeahhhhhh. We've got video peoples! All the 25v coils are running on all three playfields.

So the only real problem I've got to sort out at the moment is the VUK from the lower to main playfield is marginal. The ball can make it some of the time but not always. When I pull the playfields again to wire in the flippers I'll give it a good cleaning. Otherwise maybe pull a few windings off the coil. I've basically got it set at full strength in the software as it is.

I'm also going to start working on lighting soon too. So that means I need to sort out the lighting controller soon, and get some LED's to populate the light boards I have, as well as making up some more for the various single lamp locations. I'm not 100% sold yet on the RGB's for all the inserts. Definitely for the GI but not sure on the inserts.

-Hans

Top of the tube is just a straight cut across, acrylic all the way other than the mount brackets. Nothing broken or deformed at all. In my case the ball doesn't always clear the top of the tube, much less get enough height to bounce off the deflector. It's entering the tube cleanly on the bottom side too so it appears to be an issue with the strength of the VUK mechanism.

It's the stock coil, I had the numbers, but can't recall off the top of my head.

I'll have the playfield out later in the week to wire up the flippers and I'll start with a good cleaning before doing anything else. I had to do the same with the main to upper VUK coil as well. Figured I'll start with the easy stuff first before I worry about modifying things un-necessarily.

Today I ordered the LED's for those serial boards I had made up, plus a fadecandy serial controller, and the PCB for the power distribution board. I opted to move the rectifiers onto the power board instead of having them on the original bracket. This will clean things up quite a lot, and let me do a lot of fusing on every power circuit going through the machine. Probably be 2 weeks until all of that arrives. In the meantime I'll be working on the flipper wiring anyway so no big deal waiting on that stuff.

Right now all the lighting decisions are up in the air. I do think I'll also be ordering the MultiMorphic lighting controller too but I need to decide if I'm going to run the inserts as RGB's or single color LED's. There's only 33 insert lights, most of them are colored inserts, so I don't see a point in doing the insert lights exclusively as RGB. That's one reason I'm going with just the fadecandy at the moment, to test the effectiveness of the WS2815 RGB's under the insets. I don't want to commit to them completely until I know they're going to work.

I hadn’t dug that deep yet into the schematics, but I’m currently running it off the 25v not the 38v. Will be easy enough to move it over to the 38v once I get the drivers for that installed later in the week.

Doesn’t need much more oomph, it does clear some of the time currently, so that will probably be enough to get it to reliably go. Stock, I believe it was only relays and high voltage leaf switches, pretty much a flipper style wiring but without the hold coil and EOS switch.

Ok, that SHOULD be the last board I need to order from MultiMorphic, I just ordered a PD-LED for the insert lights, and a few of the Multimorphic RGB boards to compare light outputs.

Looking forward to testing these all out and finally making some lighting decisions.

-Hans

Lower playfield flipper wiring done. Moved that vuk from the 25v to the 38v line.

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Well, Poop. Didn't order enough Grey/Black wire. Came up short and unable to wire the upper playfield flippers without ordering more. I have enough to do the main playfield. Just ran out of time today.

My power management is also an absolute embarrassment at the moment on the cabinet. The power distribution board should take care of most of that but still going to irk me in the mean time.

-Hans

Turns out I didn't have enough wire for the main flippers, but I did have enough to do to the uppers, so I got them wired up last night. More wire is already on the way.

Software I believe is ready to go for the flippers but I have to trace down an issue with the 38v solenoid wiring between the transformer and the driver boards. My power wiring is just a disaster and hard to work through problems on it. I'm really looking forward to that distribution board arriving so that I can get it all cleaned up.

If I were to do this again, knowing what I've learned, I probably would have used the Multimorphic power distribution board, run all the coils on the 38v circuit, and used software to dial back all of the 25v mechanisms.

-Hans

I hadn't gone through your build yet, I'll have to look into it to see if I can catch some ideas. Did you also use MPF/P3-Roc? You're correct that the trap-door is a dual wound. Other than flippers I don't think I have any other hold coils since I removed the coin door lockout. I know there is a way to adjust the power of hold coils via PWM but haven't had a need to figure that out yet.

I thought I had the grounding needs of the driver boards figured out when I was popping fuses on the 25v initially, and I duplicated the same grounding for the 38v. Unfortunately the same problem came up first time I tried to power the 38v's, and stupid me had all three banks of 38v connected when I did it. I got too confident and need to take a step back and evaluate. Maybe tonight, but I've got a few orders to work on first.

I did decide finally what I'll be doing for lighting though. I'll do all the inserts as standard LED's driven by the PD-LED. Single color under colored inserts, and discreet RGB's under the white inserts. GI will be serial RGB all around.

-Hans

The diverted will definitely be coming up soon.

Had to sort out a few wiring and computer issues, but I have the lower and upper flippers running now. Can’t wait to get the lowers going too.

I do think I need to dial back the upper left. Took one flip to do this. Thankfully I have a couple spares.

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38 for all the flippers plus that vuk. Vuk working great now btw.

Easy enough to bring the voltage down if it proves necessary.

Well, I do think I found out the most convoluted and difficult method for changing out a drop target!

One of the things on my to-do list was to put some connectors into the wiring harness, to allow me to easily separate the upper playfield from the main. It's still on my to-do list, and is not on my 'done' list. I ordered some incorrect pins for the molex mini-fit jr connectors I want to use and they will not latch into the housings. So I had to leave the wiring attached and this made it much more difficult than necessary. I need to spend some time to properly pick out some part numbers that actually work with each other.

And I need to get it done quickly, because I just got a shipment notice on the new power entry boards. The bare boards will be here on Wednesday.... along with a lot of other stuff. So I'm going to have to get some connectors on order for it, along with more fuses. Once this is done it'll be significantly easier to move things between voltages.

Right now I have the power entry board on the way as well as the remainder of the flipper wire. Then I already have my lighting controllers and a few of the Multimorphic LED boards. The RGB LED's for my serial boards are enroute. I also have a 3rd 3D printer coming too. So plenty of things about to start happening soon.

That and anybody have an old PCI-E Mini SSD laying around? I'd love to switch to that instead of the big honking 3.5" SATA drive I'm currently using.

-Hans

Compact, good amperage capacity, available in either wire-to-wire or wire-to-board, and will only mate when correctly lined up. I also like the much lower insertion and removal force of the latching tabs. My only real complaints with the Mini-Fit Jr's are the confusing selection of compatible parts, and they are nowhere near as easy to remove pins from the housings compared to the KK series.

On the power board I'm using the mini-fit Jr's for all the 12v, as well as any in-harness connectors. The 5v on my power board will use 2-pin KK 3.96's (or is it 3-pin? I'll have to check the gerbers). The 25v/38v will use 9 pin KK 3.96's. This will help me prevent wrong connections.

I'm also using this build to set design standards for my next machine.

-Hans

Well, $125 worth of crimps, housings, rectifiers, fuse holders, fuses and such have just been ordered. Lots of things to connect on this machine still. Still waiting on one more bit of wire before I can finish up the flipper wiring.

Tired, been doing a lot today. Time to rest.

Should have a lot more progress to show over the weekend, considering most of the things arrived today that were holding me up. Plenty to do for sure.

-Hans

All solenoids powered. Let’s see if we get a full set of fllippers now on all three playfields.

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Good News!

I've got a full set of working flippers on this game now. I'm actually not 100% sure I have all my main and hold coils correct, but that's something I can tinker through and sort out no problem. Either way I am now able to completely play a game with a very basic rules and scoring set. It's been many years since I've last played a Haunted House, but it does not disappoint with the layout. I had forgotten how much the lower playfield actually gets used compared to Black Hole.

I am finding that I need to tweak the design of those 3D printed playfield posts I made. I tried to duplicate the original dimensions as much as possible, including a small lip around the bottom edge. That little lip sure gives me a lot of air balls. Especially up into the secret passage plastic. I've even managed to jump a ball back into the shooter lane of all places! I can probably just sand the lip off of the existing posts rather than re-print. Easy thing to fix now that I'm aware of it.

My power distribution boards arrived yesterday too, and looks pretty good. As is normal, there are a few things I'd change if I need to update them, but they'll work fine for now. I'll get that installed in my next session working on the game. I also picked up a few high-capacity mini-fit connector pairs to solve my too-short playfield harness issue. I'm going to do a separate head harness from the playfield harness, like most other games of the era had. This way it'll make things a lot easier to disconnect when I need to remove the head for transport, as opposed to pulling about 20 connectors like I currently have.

-Hans

There are days I think I am seven levels of insane for taking this thing on. My first full programming and full hardware install on a pin and let me choose one of the most complicated games ever made.

In the terms of early 80’s pinball, Black Hole was a shot across the bow at Williams and Bally. Haunted House? A full-on broadside. Let’s face it, the green beast was a show of force.

So suuuuure let the rookie try and throw a new board set and wiring harness into one.

I mean...... this is dramatically cleaner with the new power board installed. The wiring is seriously imposing at this point. That’s without the lights installed yet!

And why is pinside suddenly rotating all my images?

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The good news is the power board works perfect. I’m probably going to do another revision of it to clean up a few issues I have with it, but it’s perfectly serviceable and doing the job just fine. So I can ignore it for quite some time.

I started doing some work on the lighting today. It all compiles just fine and the game runs, but my dinky little attract mode doesn’t actually control any lights yet. I know they are wired up correct as the board can be configured to turn them all on by default, but no software control yet. I’m suspecting I’ve either got something wrong in the serial chain or the wrong locations in the config file.

-Hans

Found my lighting issue. Pretty easy once I found it.

The PD-LED boards from Multi-Morphic start at address 8 in the serial chain, not at address 0 like I thought they did. So I thought I had it set to 3, it was really set to 11. Tonight I can do a few lighting tests and then start planning out what I'm going to need to populate all the insert lights.

-Hans

Video update of the current status. Just ordered more RGB boards to get more lighting taken care of.

Business has been insane still, so still very buried under customer work, no time to get to this one.

-Hans