Novus 1 did remove some of the white so that's good. Some is still there though. Fingers crossed that it's just mylar damage and not PF damage.
The ramp motor stops immediately once the ramp contacts the PF so I'm assuming the down switch is registering correctly.

Completed some more testing of the coil temps. Played a few games, including a long-ish game, concentrating on flipping a lot and holding more than I usually do. Again, the coils started at about 76 degrees. This game I started noticing fade happening when it was in the 140s. Severe fade when it was in the 150s. My probe refused to measure after 157 degrees, so I need to get another gauge if I want to see how hot the coils can really get, but I already have enough data to see what difference the fans make. Basically, if I can keep the coils in the 120-130 temp MAX the coil power should remain consistent through a whole game, no matter how much you use the flippers for flipping or holding. Keeping the coil power as perfectly consistent as possible through every game is the goal here.

I think it's obvious to everybody that you and your ilk ( chuckwurt , etc.) are WAY smarter than me. (Of course, I rode the short bus to school and took classes in a closet, so...) What's the normal operating temperature of a coil that's been played for a while. Are the temperature readings you're getting consistent with other games, or way out of whack?

That's the problem, I have no idea what the normal range is for flipper coil temps because I've never measured them over time (has ANYONE?). Back in the LotR days, I just bought the brute force coil and called it a day, happy I could finally still make the ring shot at the end of long games. Never occurred to me to measure the temps and see about installing cooling fans, which I think would be the better approach because that way the coil isn't overly-strong at the start just so it can brute force its way through when it gets hotter later.

But on Stranger Things, the fact that I could easily feel the fade coming on in the 140s and it was severe and undeniable by the 150 means there is clearly room for improvement. I had the meter connected and set up to the right, so I could just look at it when I started feeling weakness in the flipper shots. I'm actually surprised this issue hasn't been raised in tournaments, since fade on long games does affect your ability to make shots.

Okay, just finished testing with the fan installed on only one side so I could compare with and without. The prior tests show that I used/heated the left and right fan almost equally when I play, so that's good enough for this next comparison.

WITH the fan kit installed, the right flipper coil range was 79-94 degrees over the course of the game, and it varied up and down a few degrees during the game, not just up.

WITHOUT the fan kit installed, on the same game played, the left flipper coil was 79-123 degrees. It never went down, only up. 123 was where it happened to be when the game ended.

This was about a 7-8 minute game, so it didn't come close to fade level, but these initial results are very promising for being able to keep both coils at a consistent narrow-range performance level from beginning to end with no fade at all once both sides have the flipper coil fan kit installed.

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EDIT: Played a bunch more games now with the coil temp probes installed. Some of the games lasting 10-15 minutes and the fan is even better than I expected. At the end of the longest game, the temps were:

Left flipper (no fan) 130F and still rising (never going down)
Right Flipper (fan cooled) 97F to 101F degrees (stayed in this range)

So the fan kit flipper coil was 30 to 33 degrees LESS than the uncooled coil that would have kept rising in temperature! I think we have a winner that will work for all Spike 2 Stern machines to prevent even a small amount of flipper fade on long games. I'll be finalizing the mounting hardware and wire harness design then sending some test kits out, then once those are field tested, these'll be in the Pin Monk store.
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I’m with you I think the bullsh@t mode is well bullsh@t! Pun intended it very underwhelming. But I think it’s because I had my hopes up for a video mode. I think video modes are a great way break up the madness and fun if integrated well. I love the video modes in my Indy, shadow, and Houdini. The one in my rob zombie is just ok, but I still strive to get it.

I’m glad you brought up the mystery awards I thought I was the only one who noticed that you get things you don’t need or can’t use.

Just a thought but has anyone got the stranger points mystery award? I noticed that the score was all ones and zeros is there a binary code hidden message? I don’t know how to read binary but just a thought.

Well, if you've figured out the problem and this solves the power of the shot to the TK lock, you'll have a hell of a mod on your hands. Of course, Stern should really put out a fix for this since it's a design problem (if that's indeed the problem). Nice work!

You get 11, 011, 000 I would assume because of the main character.

It is 8 digits, which is a byte, so that's suspicious. But if you run it forward you have 216, and if you run it backwards, you have 27. Neither seems especially significant offhand. Pretty sure it's just about the Elevens.

Damn it would have been cooler if there was a hidden message.

So they removed the video mode placeholder and added stranger points.
Bring back the video mode!

Stranger Points is a nice bonus. By the way, it seems like I'm getting the Mystery Award lit less often on .94 than on previous updates. Does anyone else think so? Also, what triggers the Mystery Award to lite, switch hits?

Thanks!

Do you guys have any strategies/tips for demodog mode? I quickly lose control of the ball once I try to bounce it around off them

What is interesting on demodog mode is that you can hold ball and the time will still run down. Same as with upside down mode. I know that defeats purpose of playing game, but you can get farther in game in terms of mode completion.

When I play the first Demo Dog mode where the white letters are the points, I knock down the drops and keep shooting the two shots that are exposed when the drops are down, purposefully bricking my shots so that I don't shoot the ball through the center. Heck, more often than not that's what I hit when I'm trying to start Demogorgon anyway. That's a quick way to ricochet between two of the Demo Dog shots until you accidentally hit the center and reset the drops.

One thing I've been wondering about demodogs is when that first mode starts all of the letters are flashing. As you hit them they go solid until you hit all of them then I think they go flashing again. I've never been able to look up at that point but is completing them also increasing the value of each hit?

nice, I've never had a chance to look up and see the increase. Will have to play with that some

Sounds like you collected the 11m with 2x playfield running.

Here is the only picture i took

C6C10250-87B4-4B29-9AB3-3E1122BBF2CA (resized).jpeg

Hi, i'm curious.
Any leak about the Stern topper for that title ?

Spent a bunch more time and it seems like the cooling kit on each flipper prevents it from getting to even 110F. Usually it hangs around 97-102F. This is a huge improvement over nothing on the flippers when it maxed out my temp probe at 157F.

Flipper fade seems to be impossible once these are installed for each flipper.

Getting the production harnesses made now and should have these available in a few weeks. I'll keep playing and testing this until then.

cool-kit-right (resized).jpg

Yeah, I had to redesign a few times to get it to fit right, there's less space than you think. I settled on the slightly angled setting because the mount already put it off to the one end of the coil, and straight on was very tight to the GI lighting socket below it. I might have to adjust the brackets per machine if other titles benefit from it, but it works well for Stranger Things.

I'll also probably be collecting coil play temp data from here out on new machines. My results from this one were pretty surprising.

Having seen the temperature range of an uncooled Spike2 coil now, I'm actually surprised it's not required for tournaments to have cooling to keep the temps in a stable fade-free range. Without it there's no way to guarantee one player isn't playing at a disadvantage to others from too-hot coils that have started to fade. Paying close attention once I knew what to look for, fade on Stranger Things starts in the 130s, gets very noticible in the 140s, and ridiculous in the 150s.

People have told me they have felt it in long Iron Maiden games. I'm putting probes on that machine next. I also made a modified version of the fan bracket with a slot to hold the probe precisely over (we'll, under if the playfield's down) the flipper coil that I can use on any Spike 2 machine now to gather more data.

But even changing the timing of shots due to a slightly sluggish flip that increases over time could affect tournament scoring.

Flippers we’re fine for 800M, bitchez.

AB8A10C2-4294-4A55-BEF2-7C8F2E813936 (resized).jpeg

My second 800k of day.

since the new code I haven't had many games under 350m, and hit the 750+ 3 times.
But cant beat my 14 year olds 911m.

I must admit I'm a little skeptical of this, but only because I've tried to prove it and I can't. Before I made some adjustments, I too felt the TK lock was easier to make when the game was fresh. I've measured the temperature increase on my coils and also verified that the resistance increases as the temperature rises. That said when I put a scope on it and found that: 1) the voltage across the coil remains constant and 2) The time between when the coil is energized and the limit switch is hit also remains constant at least to a fraction of a ms. I will agree that the current in the coil should be slightly less as it warms up given these observations, but I couldn't demonstrate any real consequence of this. I actually did a stream a while ago where I had a camera on the scope as I played. Thus, it seemed the coils don't get more sluggish over time, at least in terms of the time it takes them to hit the limit switch and this was in play where they were actually hitting a ball most of the time.

I'm also convinced there is something of a placebo effect of when you change something in the game that you think might help it seems like it might play a little better, even though this might not objectively be the case - a lot of odd TK lock fixes have been proposed in this thread than I'm convinced are based on this principle.

Definitely seems like the newer code is higher-scoring.

I've felt the same way you do about how the flippers feel after 20 min or so on this game. That said now that my TK lock is really adjusted well I don't think it makes a difference and it also doesn't make a difference in a friend who has his lock set up similarly. I haven't tried the fan yet, but I've thought about it. All I'm saying it should be possible to objectively measure what you and others are experiencing - I wasn't able to do it and I do see that anyone else has either. I also agree that when the coil voltage is the same, the resistance increases (due to heat), then the current must go down along with the magnetic field strength. All I can say is this doesn't seem to be the predominate factor, or even yield measurable difference, in terms of how quickly the flipper actually moves. I would love to see someone demonstrate an effect that can be objectively measured. If this is a real effect it seems it should be not only easily measured but effect every Stern game made and that simply isn't something that I or most others have noticed - at least beyond the right flipper on this game.

Might also boil down to play style. From the temp data I gathered over the past week, holds do not raise the max coil temp as high as a lot of flipping.

Any idea what the upcoming stern "fix" for the TK lock is?
Fans? Coils?