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I tried a tp-link ac600 in my Godzilla for the heck of it and it didn't work. As suspected they're probably are no drivers there for it. I put the original dongle back in with power on and immediately was back on IC.

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Reports from 2 different tournaments yesterday about multiple games resetting. Clearly there's still some work to be done.

Yea....reported mine....played the game alot last night, couldn't replicate the issue...suspect they'll iron it out....definitely warming up to this platform though...

I have been enjoying it so far but as a tournament player this is really concerning. Hope they get it figured out soon.

Can imagine it would be frustrating in tourney play...I just have OCD and noticed immediately my topper went dark....some "0" just isn't playing nice with a "1"....tradeoff on technology improvements I suppose. Innovative when it works..." fail" in my world when it doesn't....

I'd definitely rotate those antennas away from the metal backbox (detunes the antenna).

Thanks very much for posting this. I need a little bit more help please.

Do you plug this wifi dongle straight into the CPU or do you use a connector?

I bought the TP-Link USB 2.4GHz version. Installed 6 of them, no issues. Will update w/a link if you're interested.

Thanks for the help, appreciate it. There are so many different variations. Could you please confirm this is the one?

https://www.amazon.com.au/WiseTiger-Adapter-AC600Mbps-Wireless-Compatible/dp/B01M0Q51UI/ref=sr_1_3_sspa?crid=1TT0WR16S873P&keywords=TP-Link+USB+2.4GHz&qid=1664840467&sprefix=tp-link+usb+2.4ghz%2Caps%2C889&sr=8-3-spons&psc=1&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUEyTERFVEJNUVRYQ0FKJmVuY3J5cHRlZElkPUEwODgzOTgyMjU3RjkxRVoxN1pXRCZlbmNyeXB0ZWRBZElkPUEyWTZTTDNYUFEyN1VCJndpZGdldE5hbWU9c3BfYXRmJmFjdGlvbj1jbGlja1JlZGlyZWN0JmRvTm90TG9nQ2xpY2s9dHJ1ZQ==

Anyone else waiting for more IC functionality to be released. Would love to compete against other home users and have an at home leaderboard. One showing my home scores and those of my connections. Anyone???

Wasn't that one, it was this: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B008IFXQFU

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Awesome, thanks!

Yep. Even though the no-kit Home Team workaround seems to be here to stay (I hope), I'm still trying to find the motivation to buy about a dozen micro SDs and wifi dongles. Achievements: meh. Detailed score tracking, leaderboards and the like: hell yeah! I assume this will come at some point.

I can see the appeal for that, though not something I'd be interested in.

What I would like to see added is a more robust way to review my play and score history. Ideally a "download CSV" or similar feature on the web site that dumps the entire database of my account to a file. As far as I can tell, the web site will only show my high score per day, and even that only goes back a few weeks. I'd like to get the full dataset.

We did the work-around on all our non-IC pins Spike 2 pins (excluding JP that has the different code and GZ that is IC from the factory). Wife is 'all in' on the IC stuff, really surprised me since she's not a 'gadget' person. I think it's mostly due to kicking my butt and seeing it online.

I think we need achievements for 'maintenance', I'd kick butt in that area since I keep the pins in tip-top shape.

My family as well is all in with IC. We really like all the achievements and scores. All of our home pins have them now and with TMNT there are things you only get with having IC.

One thing Stern should implement with achievements, is rarity. I know playstation does this with trophies. Would be cool to see how rare an achievement is. Stern already does something similar with the badges, allowing users to see the number of people that have the badge. The % would be cool, the way playstation does it.

So I listened to the insider connected video they linked to in the one of the recent emails. While I did skip around a bit it doesn't seem like they mentioned anything specific about what may be coming, just leaving it in the vague, more things are coming, we are listening camp. It kind of reads to me as this is just a gimmick to them, not something that needs to be something much bigger than it currently is. Maybe in their head it's just some new thing they are sticking in machines and there's no real pressure for them to put a lot of time and energy into this thing. Don't get me wrong, I'd rather their focus be on creating new pinball machines, just my take from watching the video.

It's just my opinion - I feel they know exactly what they are doing and this is not a gimmick for them.

IC has only been out for a year - and it's becoming way more popular than many would like to think. This whole thread is about people talking about it, complaining about their achievements not being recorded properly, how to get it on their other machines cheaply etc. 80% of enthusiasts are hooked already.

They know what they are doing with this. They are just not in a rush to throw the switch as there is no pressure to do it on anyone's timline but their own. Like a cornerstone release that needs to be rushed due to licensing agreements.

Oh, they know.... more is coming....

I agree that they have a solid, long term vision for Insider Connected but I do think the community has pushed them into potentially new directions. But the most important thing is, they need to speed up the process of rolling new (planned) features out.

They know exactly what they are doing?

Is that why day 1 launch features are still basically useless? (Operator Stats)
Is that why feature rollout has been glacial for a product that is basically all web-based?
Is that why they didn't hire staff to dedicate to it until many months AFTER launch?
They have yet to outline a model for operators that would even justify why they should buy in..
A product that was ages late.. and still is an infant.

They have a concept that is almost 'impossible to screw up' and they've done a pretty good job of almost killing it themselves. They are going into a market that has already been proven and established by other vendors for ages... yet they can't even get simple things like Time of Day and play counts working for people that spent BIG MONEY to build out their games with retro kits.

The whole thing reeks of a program they dipped their toe in, they were not ready to dedicate what was necessary to execute, and still are trying to play catchup without budget or capacity to do it right.

Very well said, it's as if no one involved in Insider has ever played anything other than pinball games before. I have heard from my local distributor that they are waiting for a critical mass to own these things to really crank out the features, though that sounds a bit like bs than necessarily facts. Like even though they are selling insider connected to home users that they aren't treating this as something that needs to be a full featured product(though they talked about leaderboards on that podcast like they were the greatest thing for the community... ). I am sure Stern is loving tracking how people play their games, I am assuming even if people don't log into Insider they are getting valuable information that will make them more money in the future.

I am not trying to say if you like Insider as it currently is you are wrong, I just have a different opinion. It's not "terrible", just, completely lacking a "killer app" type of feature, something that would make this a must have.

but messing up day start / end times / timezones seems like an very big thing to miss.

I am not defending Stern here but as a developer of shared software used in many different regions I can say that dates, times and timezones are a pain in the ass sometimes. A simple "solution" for the issues right now though would be to report back from the IC servers whatever the Server Time is. At least then you would know what Day and Time the server thinks it is which is the source of truth for many of these features.

But as a developer you are also aware of the requirements around it and you would have the common sense awareness to go 'hrm, this will be used by people in more than one site, how do we represent and calculate 'daily stats''

Or, when you missed that the first time, when you rolled out a new feature called 'daily streaks' you would have asked the question "ok, what does daily mean? Once a calendar day or once every 24hr period?"

Of course their events should all be done to some universal time reference or they should not be doing this at all... the problem is in their computation and display of the data. They built a global product without actual meaningful locality references.

It's mistakes like this that tell me the product was outsourced with poor oversight. An issue you would have tolerated more for the first launch, and a few months after that. But we're hitting basically a year now with other feature releases done since.

That tells me the program had bad management and/or funding issues on top of their prior issues.

You're not wrong and your statement sums it up nicely. I've said it before but with the newer internal hires and resources put on this project hopefully 2023 is a more exciting year for IC and can hopefully involve some kind of heads up or online competitive play as well as fix up existing issues for operators. I just purchased a kit for my Deadpool and it is fun getting the achievements but once that is done then what...

A platform like ic is a crap ton of effort and expense. Stern is a very small company with limited resources compared to many tech companies that make similar things. I expected ic to be a steaming pile and was surprised it was as together as it is. And yes it clearly has a long way to go.

We have a couple of games on IC. Is it possible to create a Leaderboard with a home account?

I see that if you have a pro account, pretty easy to do but we only have a home gameroom.

Right now you cannot do this but really hope in the future we can.

Thanks very much..We hope so too!

They already have the timezone data! It says my games are GMT-4, they just don't apply that to when the "day" switches over. Or keep any historical data. I should be able to look and see how much busier a Tuesday is than a Monday but there is next to nothing there. I don't even know how many "plays" are paid vs super value, replays, or any kind of useful audits.

My recent issue is the that my leaderboard view is asking for a login at my kiosk display. That should not be the case and hasnt in the past. Anybody else seeing this?

nope

Make sure you copied the right link - not a regular leaderboard link (correct url will have /kiosk/ in the path)

The link has to be copied exactly and is case sensitive

I plug it straight into the USB on the CPU board.

Thanks mate, I have it sorted!

What is everyone’s one must have item you would like to see next from Insider?

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/stern-insider-connected/page/82#post-7171182

Leaderboards for home collections.

If you're reading this Stern, us operators need an option to be able to play
our own games on location while running leaderboards and not be counted as playing.
It is so freaking lame that when I run a leaderboard that I don't have the option
to exclude myself and then still play my games without counting on them...

Can't you just like, not login? I know, imperfect solution, you don't get achievements, but like ectobar said, I wouldn't hold my breath for an official solution. So many bigger fish to fry.

While I get that Stern doesn't have the resources of a Sony or Microsoft they are still charging what they are charging for Connected so that does put them to a higher standard.

The top features I can think of are:
Daily changing challenges for each table. Challenges akin to rule changes seem less likely but that would be nice.

And some sort of online, the ideal would be a tournament type online mode. As I've mentioned before I don't think they can do online without ghosts(rather than actually playing people live) there is a lot of benefits to ghosts including weeding out the cheaters. But it's important that people are matched by skill level, and that people aren't waiting endlessly in a queue.

I just recently upgraded my Deadpool Premium with IC. Went smooth, but occasionally it doesn’t seem to connect right away after booting it up. I saw that signal strength is only 48, so decided to try an ASUS Wi-Fi dongle I had laying around. Swapped it out, but it says there isn’t an adapter installed. Swapped it back to the original and now I am getting the same issue. Not sure what to try next. I took both adapters to me PC and they both work fine. Thanks for any help!

This is probably a dumb question, but are you turning the game off when changing the adapters and having it sit until all LED's on the CPU board are off before turning it back on?

Different brands of wifi adapters use different drivers, depending on what underlying chipset they use. Stern pins only have a specific set of drivers installed. As I understand it, TP-Link makes a compatible wifi adapter. See e.g. https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/stern-insider-connected/page/44#post-6681716 . The Asus adapter probably needs drivers that aren't installed.

Note that no matter what adapter you use, it will have challenges getting good signal through the backbox. Switching to the TP-Link (or equivalent) might help, but you may still not get a good enough connection for it to be practical to update over IC. If you don't care about that, then worth a try I guess.

Something else you might do is pop out the plug on the top of the backbox (usually used for a topper) so you can remote (using a USB extension cable) the wifi adapter so it can get a better signal. Or if you have an Ethernet port on the wall nearby, just hardwire the whole thing (there's an Ethernet jack on the top of the motherboard).

I will also point out that even under the best of circumstances, the game is ready to play a short while earlier than it has connected to IC. On my Rush game, I find that I need to wait until the IC splash screen is displayed before I can log in (whether using Home Team or scanning a QR code).

Good idea on the USB extender. I managed to get it working again with the original dongle. Signal strength of 48 doesn’t sound too good and my router is about 15 feet away. I may look into the TP-Link dongle. Thanks for the advice!

I got an extender and had mixed results with it, to the point that I just got rid of it and bought the same TP-LINK I ended up getting for my JP that doesn't even have IC installed in it. I never had an issue with it in JP, and once I got one for GZ, I too have never had an issue with connections, and could get rid of the extender popping out the top.

I want to finish achievements on games that I own on location that are also on leaderboards but not be on the leaderboard lol

There is plenty of help already on this thread. You need to ensure that you buy the correct dongles, extenders, etc. I just got educated on this recently by a few helpful pinsiders. If you look back through the thread you will find links to the items you are looking for.