So is Stranger Things the first pin Stern has cost-reduced the cabinet screened warning out of? It's just a black sticker with yellow print now. Was BK or JP that way? Every time I think Stern has cost-reduced every possible thing, they find something else. Durability rating of that sticker for routes is -7.

Oh, right. The build date on this Stranger Things is also January. I wonder if this started in the new year? Whatever the case, more lame stealth quality degradation by Stern. Boo.

You can just link the youtube video directly and save people the facebook tracking:

Looks pretty cool. How long are you letting it cure before installing it?

Heh, 3 months sounds great. I let a ToM cure for a YEAR before I installed it - just to be sure.

Reboot. Power off for a good 15 seconds and try again.

Check to see of the ball gate there moves freely. Also, what is the pitch of your playfield set to? Level side to side?

If it happens more, you might have a bad SD card. Keep an eye on it. Failed boots seem to be a symptom.

Just make sure the gate opens fully and closes completely. Sometimes the little bent part on the side is too long or bent wrong and gets caught when moving, preventing the gate from opening and closing correctly.

If it happens a lot, you can also slo-mo record that area with your phone when you make the shot to see if reviewing the video will give you a clue.

What did you unzip the files with?

Is anyone getting clipping out of mostly the left speaker on 0.90? Some of the callouts when there's an effect playing at the same time (and music) gets very crunchy and I think the speaker's clipping.

Same as iron maiden. Launching the ball, entering the high score letters, starting the game. I assume the video mode will use it, though.

Get a Deadpool Prem. Circle back to STh once the code is more mature and issues on the Prem/LE are worked out. Deadpool Prem/LE is fantastic. Play it, enjoy it for a year then decide if you still want Stranger Things.

Might be worth trying an iphone app that calculates the speed of an object from video. Measure at the start of play and then again 30 minutes later to see if the flipper power has faded.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/speedclock-video-radar/id400876654

Did you try recording it in slo-mo with your phone to see if it really is the optos triggering the diverter too slowly?

Re-did the DANGER sign on the left ball return in 3D to eliminate all the visible screws. The "DANGER" lettering is angled towards the player, also. The mounting is similar to the Iron Maiden 3D Anubis I did where it's all hidden to clean up the top and get rid of 3 giant screws ruining the look. Working on the one for the right side now, too. I'll sell them as a set with the mounting hardware and tool to install them.
ST-DANGER-Hidden Mount-sml (resized).jpg

Also have a gradient red to orange lens bracket made for the "Burn it Back" insert. When I settle on a final color for the 2x insert, I'll have all 3 up in the pinmonk store as a set.
After-sml (resized).jpg

Well, the shot maps are almost identical, so that's not a huge surprise.

The woods art blades look pretty good. I wish they did something with UV-reactive inks, though. Not much of a difference...

You can't just copy the zip file you download. You have to take the files OUT of the archive you downloaded and then put THOSE in the root of the USB.

You want the two files on the left in that picture in the root directory of the USB drive.

You won't love it as much once that bitch Barb plays her indian-giver routine a few times, stealing 40 mill from you each time. I used to be sympathetic to her character, now when she gets pulled into the pool, I cheer.

10 million with 2x playfield lit should give you 20 million for that saucer shot.

Replace both coil stops with the pinball life one. Your flipper will stop sticking. You likely have a broken coil stop. Soon you will have two. Stern ships ones they know are defective.

https://www.pinballlife.com/flipper-coil-stop-for-sternsega.html

Easy fix. Takes about 10 minutes total to do both.

You could put a stronger coil on it, but then you'd be beating the crap out of the closer stuff like standups.

It will probably end up as a damaged design, even with fixes. We'll see if Stern does better than just eventually disabling the feature and calling it "as designed" like they did for the GoT diverter issue.

You haven't truly arrived until you get a downvote from dingleberry. I got an upvote from dingle once and it bummed me out. Seemed wrong.

Anyone know what the "Demodog spinning target" in the feature matrix for Pro/Prem/LE is talking about?

EDIT: NVM. It's the spinner for the left orbit with the demodog sticker on it.

Haha! Looks like it's time for a PinMonk power flippers quiet fan kit.

LOTS of dimpling (even in areas that don't get airballs like under and to the left of the demogorgon), but no clear pooling or chipping on the one here.

Munsters is the only true stinkbomb in the Spike era that Stern calls complete that literally is almost exactly as INCOMPLETE as Batman '66 was at launch. Unfortunately that was Dwight. But from the stream, it looks like TMNT is a much different story, thankfully. Munsters will be a stain on Dwight's rep for a long time.

Stern's over-use of giant screws to secure (i.e. mess up the look of) plastic pieces to playfields and ramps always bugs me. It's no different with Stranger Things. So, I redesigned the DANGER and hnl plastics in 3D and made them hidden mount, eliminating all visible screws. Once I got those done, the corner on the left suddenly looked wrong, so I made a matching hidden mount corner piece for that, too. Should have the set of three in the Pinmonk store pretty soon.

corner-compare (resized).jpg
corner_close (resized).jpg

So this is the last of the Stranger Things mods. I used Stranger Things to make it, but it's actually a universal item for any of the Pro/Prem badges on Stern Spike 2 machines to dress them up a bit. Choose a color (the GIF below is a bunch of them chained together), pop the badge off, snap it into the frame and re-attach. The frame still has a small lip, even once the badge is installed. It really dresses up the area. It'll be in the PinMonk store tonight.
Stranger-Things-Gold-Trm-Before-and-After_600x.gif

They're redoing mystery entirely last I heard. It seems to be involved with a number of the crash bugs in various ways.

It's whenever mystery is involved, strange things (as in, unintended) can happen.

Well, I guess we know what they went with to drive the projector video. Seems weird that they wouldn't place an order with that scrubbed from the ROM.

https://www.wandboard.org/

Only question now is which model did they go with.

I'm guessing this one, since it's the cheapest I see on a quick look, supports 1080p/30 and has HDMI out:

https://www.wandboard.org/products/wandboard/WB-IMX6S-BW/

Probably $40-50 or less in quantity.

What piece are you talking about? The one that goes over the switchback part of the ramp? If so, the Pro I've got has it.

Mirkwood needs more time or less ramps. I've literally only finished it once. ONCE.

Shaving a couple ramps off the completion requirement would make it more achievable. I've been within one or two ramps of finishing quite a bit, but only DONE it once, in a multiball.

It's too much like chopping wood with the repetitive same shots, and then failing almost all the time. Not fun. Maybe throw in a third shot after every 3 ramp shots, so it's 9 ramp shots and 3 of the "other" shot or something.

Does the new 0.94 code activate the lighting or add a setting in the menu to turn it on?

EDIT: I didn't notice anything on either the adjustments or diagnostics menus for 0.94. So...

No one on pinside. Seems like it's probably a code thing that hasn't been activated yet.

That was the first thing I noticed. Brian Eddy and I are of one mind, apparently.

Also found a couple more bugs in 0.94 already.

It can cause problems now, though. I had a condition where one shot to the mystery lane spotted me an insert which started Monster Hunting, and the mystery award itself started demogorgon, so I had a Monster Hunting mode that was blocked by the demogorgon ramp and impossible to finish.

And I do not like that video mode isn't even on the mystery list as a "to do" now.

I don't think so because when the demo mode was over, nothing was completed on Monster Hunting and I only had a few seconds before Monster Hunting ended. I'll pay closer attention next time it happens.

The other bug I found was a slow rolling backhand up the right orbit that activates the switch to start a mode can CHANGE the mode after it starts if the ball dribbles back down and hits the switch again right away. I slow-rolled and barely made the switch, which started Mama mode (saw the marquee screen for the mode), looked down as the ball came back and actually PLAYED Turn up the Heat mode. That was a weird one.

Stern official shooter rod light will not be lit until the next code update, confirmed. Don't bother swapping node boards or checking voltages, it's not active in the code yet.

I dunno, the cars just seem way too big because of the main Demogorgon setting the scale for the area. It makes it seem like it's a season 3 Demogorgon as big as a car or a house.

What's the scale on the Dart? If it was smaller than the main demogorgon (about half as big), that might be a logical choice for crawling out of the pops or where the upper right car is.

Yeah dart was like a large dog when it was hit into the basement in the LURE DART mode. Only a fraction of the full demogorgon and way less than a car, so the scale would be all out of whack.

So digging into the flipper fade issue. I now have the fan brackets made and have started getting baseline temperature ranges before I kick on the fans and see how much (or if) they help. These are the same fans as the SFAN-001s I sell to quiet the meanwell Stern 500W power supplies, so they're small, quiet, and only draw a small fraction of an amp each.

The flipper coils definitely heat up, but since I've never tested them before I don't know what's normal yet. In my first relatively short game, they went from 76 degrees (basically ambient room temperature) to 115 degrees when the maybe 5 minute game ended. Strictly from (perhaps flawed) observation, holding seems to be worse than flipping, but both raise the temperature of the coils. Left and Right max temps were within 1.5 degrees on the game I played when it ended, which I thought would be a wider range based on what flipper I favor.

The mount the brackets use piggyback onto existing hardware on the underside of the PF, so it will be completely reversible.

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.

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.

=================================
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.
=================================

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.

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.

Definitely seems like the newer code is higher-scoring.

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.

Heh, I went OVER the limit of my ability to measure temp with current hardware. 157F is where my probes got off the train. But after setting the baseline for increase of flip vs hold, it was obvious flip made coils hotter than hold, so I was concentrating on flipping as much as possible to get it into a "long game fade" quicker than it would normally happen.

I'm pretty sure you can brute force the fade with a bigger coil like in the LotR days, but that will be stronger for everything from the start just so it's not less strong when it fades. What are the unintended consequences of that? More airballs? More wear faster to targets? Cracked ramp entrances? I think keeping the existing coil design within baseline temp ranges where they perform well consistently is a better plan or I wouldn't have spent the time on it.

I will say that it's frustrating to play the game for temps when I can't get the cooled coils over 95F now without really grinding hard.

Pretty sure this is the coil stop like others have said. It's a 10 minute job, total, if that. I'd swap them out immediately.

You got to the secret sequel mode to Bullshit, "F-you." It's a lot less charming.

So definitely want to start 2x before that mode.

From what I heard, the shooter rod light is targeted for the next update.

Well, quiet fan kit is the only must-have I've got, but there are some other nice ones to put gradient color in the white inserts, too.

The protectors go UNDER the plastics, so I don't see how that would be a problem for the UV effect...

Fans drop the temp up to 57 degrees. The uncooled flipper in my test maxed out my probe at 157 degrees when I worked the flippers hard in a long game. The cooled flipper? Barely over 100. Now, with both fans installed, I can't even seem to break 100F TRYING, so that means zero flipper fade for as long a game as you can manage with the fans installed, which is a huge improvement.

Stranger Things flipper fade seems to subtly start in the 130F range, then get bad in the 140Fs, and gets ATROCIOUS in the 150Fs. I'll be gathering flipper temp data on all the Sterns from here out doing realtime temp with/without comparison graphs. I'm surprised no one has done it yet.

But yeah, I'm firmly of the belief that keeping the coils in the factory design cool so they perform to original spec is the way to go rather than brute forcing it with much stronger coils and potentially breaking or cracking stuff prematurely over time just so the flippers have enough oomph for a long game.
cool-kit-right (resized).jpg

Everything's done for the cooling kits (brackets, fans, hardware). All I'm waiting on are the wiring harnesses because I have to build some protection into them in case a fan shorts out or something. Should be a matter of a few weeks and they'll go in the PinMonk store here on pinside.

Just watch the large round yellow and orange inserts (I put a green line next to) for the four main shots (left orbit BIKES, left ramp WALKIE TALKIES, right orbit WRIST ROCKETS, right ramp BINOCULARS). Each time you complete one of those shots it lights an insert in that lane. When you have them all lit for a lane it's time for a mode to start.

WHICH mode you start is determined by which of the mode inserts are lit (the orange "Y" shaped circle bunch below the two left shot inserts, and the yellow flaccid dick and balls-shaped ones below the right shot inserts)

lower_pf_shots (resized).jpg

I've been wondering what hidden messages Eddy is trying to send here...

Count covered that part, but I forgot to mention that shooting the mystery lane to the right of the left ramp also will spot an insert two or three times to help get you into the first mode.

Haha, I never paid close enough attention to realize it was spotting that many.

It's an extreme case, but I played the game long and hard to really test the limits. 157 is where the left coil maxed out my probe, so it maybe could have gone even higher. But most people are probably hitting the 120-130s for mid-length games, and fade just starts to be perceptible in the 130s from my experiments.

But yeah with the cooling fans, getting even over 100F is very hard.

It's been mentioned on long games for Iron Maiden, TRON, and (a couple posts up) Black Knight 3 as well. Having measured the temps for Stranger Things in-game, I'm sure there are others and people just didn't realize it.

The issue is threefold, first you have to have a mid to longish game, second a play style that flips a lot instead of holds makes it happen more, and third you have to NOTICE the shot timing is changing (VERY SUBTLY at first, but once it gets into the 140F+ range, it becomes obvious) AND realize it's due to the coil temp. Most people that have had it happen don't realize it's the machine and not them. It took chuckwurt weeks to think coil temp could be the issue and he plays a lot. Mortals didn't have a chance.

That definitely should be an option in the settings. I hate it's down in attract mode.

Pro.

Brian said he'd put a system option to leave the ramp up in attract for Pros on the list of things to do.

Left flipper is easier but right does work. There's a very narrow range on the flipper to shoot and have it go in.

Slo-mo record the demogorgon entrance as you hit it over and over with the glass off from the left flipper (which should be the easiest). Then examine the slo-mo shots to see how exactly the ball is physically being rejected at the entrance (and if you happen to get one in, how does that look?). iPhone is a fantastic pinball diagnostic tool for this because of the slo-mo recording feature.

Once you have some slo-mo to go on, it will become less about guessing and more about fixing the actual issue with yours.

Most of them do these days. It's an excellent diagnostic tool. If you can't get it slow enough to see what's happening, send me a link to the video and I'll slow it down even more.

Maybe adjust the ramp position sensor underneath so it doesn't drop the ramp quite as far down, so the ramp is still making contact, but it's not digging in as hard.

One switch tells it when it's up, one tells it when it's down. You should be able to make it stop sooner by bending the "down sensor" switch arm a little so it triggers sooner.

If you need more than that, maybe you can loosen the collar on the drive arm and advance/retard it for a bigger change.

Ramp_sensor.jpg

Harnesses for the fan kits are done. Just waiting for the first production samples to test. Everything else is ready to go.

I'm doing temperature testing on Iron Maiden coils this weekend to see what kind of temps it throws out for long games, too.

I was able to get the video from youtube and slowed it down some more, although with the speed of the ball, it doesn't help much more.

You might be able to loosen the hex screw for the collar that has the bump on it that triggers the switch to advance it a little so it turns off before the ramp is pushed too far down.

The code to illuminate it hasn't been released yet, so dark shooter rod and bitter tears for you.

Not in there yet, if you're talking about the setting for the ramp behavior in attract mode.

Check the two switches under the PF on the wheel that tell the machine when the ramp has completed its up or down. Sounds like a loose wire or flaky switch. Put it in switch test mode and see if both work, and then wiggle the wires to them and see if it makes the switch trigger.

Wiring harnesses should be here late next week.

Do you have a multimeter? I'd check to make sure 48v is coming out of the power supply and not less, then if that's ok, check the output from the power distribution board.

The fan is thermally switched. If there's not enough load to get the power supply over 120 degrees, it won't turn on. And if it does turn on, it will turn off again when it drops to 104 degrees.

I think you just play until you run it down to 1 ball. That's what Brian indicated. Basically, make the Demo shots collect jackpots, repeat until the mode ends when you only have 1 ball left.

Flame polish makes them like new, but don't do it on the real deal until you practice on some old crappy/broken ramps because if you come in too hard you can ruin a ramp in a hurry.

It has the best results, but it also can go horribly wrong unless you know what you're doing. Maybe put out a pinside or craigslist wanted ad for some broken pinball ramps or something? No time like the present to learn...

There are two switches underneath that tell the ramp when it's hit home and fully extended. It looks like the fully extended switch is working, but the home switch may be loose or broken and the switch arm not registering all the time. Check and adjust both switches under the playfield.
Ramp_sensor (resized).jpg

Great! Now you know where to look if it happens again.

I don't know offhand. Put the game in switch test mode (make sure the coin door interlock switch is pulled out or they won't work) and depress each switch. That will tell you if they work, and also give you the name of which switch is which on the screen.

In your picture the one on the right has a pretty sharp bend in the middle post on the switch. These crappy newer Stern switches are pretty famous for breaking off right at the casing. If that switch at the right doesn't register, or only registers intermittently, I'd look more closely at that.

You can probably figure this out just with switch test and wiggling things to narrow down the actual problem.

Let's not get too crazy.

Lyman made TWD great. This will not be TWD. Lonnie has a code ceiling for whatever reason. That said, it will be fine if you're not expecting a Lyman masterpiece.

Beta testers have been sent coil cooling fan kits. Should be very close to release.

Yes. The coils getting too hot over time is the root cause of flipper fade. This solves that problem completely.