Houdini stage curtain testing and calibration

American Pinball·video·7m 48s·analyzed·May 5, 2023

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.010

TL;DR

American Pinball technical guide for Houdini stage curtain calibration and testing

Summary

Dave Brennan from American Pinball Tech Service provides a detailed technical guide for calibrating and testing the stage curtain mechanism on Houdini pinball machines. The video covers diagnostic testing through the service menu, hidden calibration utilities, troubleshooting servo connections, and step-by-step calibration procedures for the curtain and captive ball servo.

Key Claims

The stage curtain calibration menu is accessed through a hidden utilities menu by holding the right flipper button while the utilities icon is highlighted
high confidence · Dave Brennan, American Pinball Tech Service video
The instruction verbiage for curtain calibration has reversed left/right directions—left is right and right is left
high confidence · Dave Brennan explicitly notes this discrepancy during calibration steps
The servo controller board for the stage mechanism is located in the bottom corner of the playfield
high confidence · Dave Brennan during physical inspection of Houdini machine
If the curtain is not moving at all, the likely issue is incorrect servo connections or lack of power to the servo controller board
high confidence · Dave Brennan troubleshooting section
The stage curtain servo is positioned at zero on the servo connection array, with positions 0-4 running right to left
high confidence · Dave Brennan during servo board inspection

Notable Quotes

“So the verbiage in the instructions is not quite correct. Left is right and right is left.”
Dave Brennan@ 3:33 — Identifies a critical documentation error in the factory instructions that could confuse technicians during calibration
“If your curtain is not moving at all it be good to review the connections to the servo board underneath the playfield.”
Dave Brennan@ 5:59 — Primary troubleshooting step for complete curtain failure
“On the servo controller board with the game powered on you should see a red LED indicating that that board is getting power.”
Dave Brennan@ 6:30 — Visual diagnostic indicator for servo board power status

Entities

Dave BrennanpersonAmerican Pinballcompany Houdinigame

Signals

?
community_signal: American Pinball providing detailed technical video support for owner/operator self-service troubleshooting and calibration
high · Comprehensive video guide covering diagnostic testing, hidden menus, calibration procedures, and physical component inspection with contact information for additional support
?
product_concern: Factory documentation for stage curtain calibration contains reversed left/right instructions that could lead to technician confusion or incorrect calibration
high · Dave Brennan explicitly states 'the verbiage in the instructions is not quite correct. Left is right and right is left' during calibration demonstration

Topics

Technical support and service documentationprimaryHardware calibration proceduresprimaryServo mechanism troubleshootingprimaryService menu navigationsecondary

Sentiment

neutral(0)— Technical instructional content delivered professionally. Tone is educational and matter-of-fact without strong positive or negative sentiment.

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.023

Hey there, Dave Jeff Brenner with American Pinball Tech Service. Today I'm going over stage curtain calibration and testing. So in order to start this, go into your Coindor service menu by hitting the black button, go into tests, and then cycle over to stage and you're going to get some prompts on the screen and do exactly what it says. Use the flipper buttons to move through the test. The first one will be a closed curtain. The curtain is currently closed so you hit the right flipper button and it will open it and you can cycle back and forth using the left and right flipper buttons to review that the curtain is opening and closing as it should. Now the next test is for the servo on the underside of the playfield for the captive ball. So the captive ball will move up and down in various positions just keep hitting the right flipper button and as it moves through those and verify that it's working. And then it'll cycle back through to the curtain test. If for some reason your curtain is not moving in the manner it's supposed to. For example, if it's not opening all the way or closing all the way, then we'll need to look at the calibration of the curtain servo itself. In order to do this, hit the green coin door button to back out of this test and go back to the home screen of the service menu The next thing we do is we go over to utilities and if you scroll over using the red buttons you see something called Stage Calibration What this is actually doing is it's calibrating the captive ball inside the stage. I already have a video for this. All this is doing is telling the captive ball what the top point is for the octos inside the stage. So watch that video and it will go through those steps. We're not covering that on this video. We'll be covering the curtain calibration, which is a hidden menu. So back out of the utilities menu, and then from here, what you'll need to do is use your flipper buttons, and you want to use your right flipper button, push and hold the right flipper button while it's on the utilities icon highlighted. Now, hit the black enter button on the coin door. This will now expand your utilities menu with features that you did not have before. So here's ones for burn-in and stage curtain calibration, catapult testing, and some others. What we're going to do is the stage curtain calibration. So hit the black enter button on your coin door. So this is where it gets a little bit tricky. So the verbiage in the instructions is not quite correct. Left is right and right is left. So what this is really doing for step one is saying you want to set the close position So you going to hit the right flipper button as many times as necessary to move the curtain until it moves all the way to the right So it's currently closed. So what I want to do is see how many button clicks to the left it takes to start moving the curtain door. and you can start to see it's opening it up a crack. So now I want to hit the right flipper button and close the door. And then I'm going to push the start button when the door is closed. Now I'm going to use the left flipper button to open the door all the way. Okay, now I hit the start button to save the settings and then do what it says on the screen. Hit the enter button on the coin door, then hit exit. Now you can go back into your stage testing and check to see that the curtain moves back and forth as it's supposed to. back into tests, go over to stage testing, and use your flipper buttons to move right and left through the curtain test. If for some reason your curtain is not functioning not opening and closing the way that it supposed to then it likely that the servo is burned up or the calibration is not correct on the servo If your curtain isn moving at all it be good to review the connections to the servo board underneath the playfield. So lift your playfield fully vertical and what you're looking for is the servo controller board. It's in the bottom corner of the playfield and what you're looking for is one, does it have power and two, are all the connections attached. So let me get in closer here and show you. On the servo controller board with the game powered on you should see a red LED indicating that that board is getting power. That's the first thing to look at. That connector is on the bottom right with red and black wires going into it that's powering your board. The next thing to check is the servo connections. The zero position is the stage. So you have these servo connections 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 going right to left and the zero position is the furthest right. That is your stage curtain. Make sure that you have the black wires going up to the top and white wire going to the bottom. It should match with the one position which is your captive ball. Ensure that those are connected and making sure that you have power to that board. If you have any questions about anything that has been discussed in this video please reach out to me at the email and phone number listed at the bottom of the screen. Thanks for watching!