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Houdini Lock and Trough switch testing

American Pinball·video·11m 21s·analyzed·May 12, 2023
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.012

TL;DR

American Pinball tech guide for diagnosing Houdini lock/trough switch failures

Summary

Dave Brennan from American Pinball Tech Service provides a comprehensive troubleshooting guide for lock and trough switch issues on Houdini Master of Mystery. The video walks through diagnostic procedures using the coin door service menu, physical inspection of lock mechanisms, and connector verification to help owners identify and resolve ball tracking problems.

Key Claims

  • Houdini Master of Mystery has two physical ball locks: one top lock on the left side and one subway lock accessible through the magic shop scoop

    high confidence · Dave Brennan, American Pinball Tech Service, describing the game's lock configuration

  • Trough and lock switch issues commonly manifest as the game not recognizing a drain or losing track of the ball during play

    high confidence · Dave Brennan explaining symptoms of malfunctioning switches

  • The left lock uses three micro switches that must be centered and consistently pressing to ensure proper switch closures

    high confidence · Dave Brennan demonstrating lock switch inspection and adjustment procedures

  • The right lock (subway lock) uses three opto switches that sense ball position and connect via a switchboard to an opto board

    high confidence · Dave Brennan showing the opto switch connections and functionality testing

  • American Pinball provides a quick reference guide on their service page that documents all switches, coils, wire colors, and connector locations for Houdini Master of Mystery

    high confidence · Dave Brennan directing owners to the service documentation resource

Notable Quotes

  • “If you've ever had a situation where you drain the ball and it doesn't recognize the drain, or if you're playing the game and it seems to lose track of the ball and do some weird activity, it could be attributed to your lock or trough switches.”

    Dave Brennan@ 0:17 — Defines the primary symptoms that prompt this troubleshooting guide

  • “So you can see how they function and where they get connected. If you go to American Pinball's website and go to the service page, you will find a quick reference guide for Houdini Master of Mystery that shows you all of these switches and coils in the game.”

    Dave Brennan@ 4:11 — Directs owners to official documentation resource for detailed reference

  • “They should be pushing up on the micro switch consistently so that you get a lock closure, a switch closure every single time.”

    Dave Brennan@ 5:46 — Explains the critical requirement for reliable lock switch operation

  • “One thing to check out while you're here is give these wires a little wiggle for each one just to make sure that you have a good connection and you don't have any flaky connectors for this connection point.”

    Dave Brennan@ 8:46 — Practical diagnostic tip for identifying intermittent connection issues

Entities

Dave BrennanpersonAmerican PinballcompanyHoudini Master of Mysterygame

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: American Pinball providing comprehensive video-based technical support and educational content for machine owners, including detailed walk-throughs of diagnostic procedures and reference documentation

    high · Dave Brennan's detailed tech service video covering lock and trough switch troubleshooting with directions to online service resources

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.034

0:00
Hey Houdini owners, Dave Brennan with American Pinball Tech Service. Today I'm going over troubleshooting steps that you can take for your trough switches and lock switches in your game. If you've ever had a situation where you drain the ball and it doesn't recognize the drain, or if you're playing the game and it seems to lose track of the ball and do some weird activity, it could be attributed to your lock or trough switches. So, without further ado, I'm going to slide the playfield glass off and zoom in for a closer look.
0:44
Now that you have your playfield glass off, the first thing you'll want to do is enter into the Coindor service menu and go into Tests and then Switches.
0:57
And here you can see that all the trough switches are highlighted bright green, indicating that all six balls are in the trough. So those are working fine.
1:09
But now we want to test and look at the lock switches. There are two physical ball locks in Houdini. So in order to get the balls out to test those locks, back out of the test menu and then go into Utilities. And then the first selection is to clear the pinballs from the game. In order to do this, you'll need coil power. So you're going to need to pull out on the coin door interlock switch located at the bottom left hand corner of your coin door. Now you can enter into that, push the start button, and clear the pinballs. Catch them as they come down and you should end up with six pinballs. Now you can back out of the utilities menu, go back into tests and switches, and now you can see that all the trough switches are dark green indicating that they're not active right now. So, first thing we'll look at is the top lock on the left hand side. So that's if you shoot up the lock lane So this would so that left lock one is now highlighted bright green Now two
3:01
Now three. Those indicating that all of those locks are working. So one thing to inspect while you're looking at the top lock or the rollover switches. So those should be centered with the pinball and then they should be pressing that switch up so it closes consistently. So you might want to try that a handful of times to make sure that they consistently close those switches. Now for the subway lock, the easiest way is to go into the magic shop. There's right lock one, right lock two, right lock three. So that is showing that all trough switches and all lock switches are working properly. So next we're going to take a closer look at the lock switches themselves so you can see how they function and where they get connected. If you go to the American Pinball website and go to the service page, you will find a quick reference guide for Houdini that shows you all of these switches and coils in the game. So if you scroll down on that document, you're going to find a grid of all the switches and just so you can see that the left lock for 1, 2, and 3 and what switchboard that those belong to and the wire colors. Also the APTO switches for the subway lock 1, 2, and 3. So you can see where those are plugged in on the APTO board and I'm going to lift the playfield and show you where those are connected and how they function. Before I lift the playfield fully vertical, I want to rest the playfield on the yellow support rails in the lock bar receiver like this. I can get a better look at the left lock micro switches. So take a look with those three pinballs that were in the lock Take all three of the pinballs and move them in and out of the lock Review how those are pressing the switch They should be pushing up on the micro switch consistently so that you get a lock closure, a switch closure every single time.
6:05
If these are not closing consistently or it's not centered on the micro switch rollovers, you can either adjust this bracket that the switches are on or you can lightly adjust the micro switch levers with a switch adjustment tool to get them centered with the pinballs. Now with the playfield lifted and resting on the back box, you can see the underside of where the switch connections are. Right in the bottom center of the playfield, you'll see there is a switchboard for the left lock that we were just looking at. And you'll see the connector with a bunch of red wires with color stripes. So, from the quick reference guide that is left lock 1, 2, and 3, and it's red with yellow, red with green, red with blue wires, and this connector runs through and gets connected with a smaller 4-pin connector that goes through the play field and attaches to those micro switches. The next thing we'll look at are the right lock switches, which is the under trough just below the scoop on the top side of the playfield. And this has three opto switches that sense the ball. If you again look at your quick reference guide, this is going to a switchboard for yellow and black, yellow and brown, yellow and red, and that is located at the bottom left of your playfield. And those plugs, so it goes from this switchboard to the opto board that's on the opposite side, and it is plug X2, X3, and X4. All of these are the same opto switch so you can actually see their functionality Now if you were to unplug one of these square plugs you see that right lock 1 for X2 is now activated indicating that this is unplugged. Same thing with X3 and X4 on this board. One thing to check out while you're here is give these wires a little wiggle for each one just to make sure that you have a good connection and you don't have any flaky connectors for this connection point. If those are all good, so now let me zoom in here and we'll take a closer look at the connections to the opto's themselves. Take a look at the right lock, the under trough that is located just below the scoop and what you can do is reach your fingers around the subway and break the beam for the opto's and review that all of these are working. One thing to look at is are these optos securely fastened to the bracket on both sides and that nothing is obstructing their view from seeing the ball. Another thing while you're in here is just inspect that the lock release coil plunger can let the balls feed to the scoop. So just check the function of that plunger that that is going down all the way like it should. And then finally while you're in here there is the scoop plunger switch micro switch that gets activated when the balls come from the lock to the scoop and so what's important is the lever for this micro switch needs to function properly so when the balls come from the lock it activates the switch pushing it down and then that way the scoop knows that the ball is there so it can fire the plunger and kick it out so make sure that that is functioning well and it's consistent. Thanks for watching this Tech Tip video. If you have any questions about anything that was covered, please reach out to me at the email or phone number listed at the bottom of the screen. Catch you next time!