Stern Insider sync

Open Settings, go to the Data & Integrations tab, and press Connect on the Stern Insider card. Sign in with the same email and password you use at insider.sternpinball.com. Pinventory stores the login encrypted and only ever reads from Stern. It never writes anything back to your Insider account.

The first sync runs right away. Machines claimed in your Insider account are matched to your fleet by serial number and title. Any that are missing are created from the catalog, with the right edition where Stern reports one.

The sync refreshes when you open Pinventory, and on its own every four hours. Each machine gets its installed code version, out-of-service state, last-played time, and tech alerts.

One switch on the integration card controls both. Turn off "Keep my Stern games up to date" and Pinventory only syncs when you press Sync now.

Operator accounts get more, because Stern gives an operator account more. Each machine's audit meters (plays, coins, and earnings) import as audit readings, and your per-location play counts appear under the integration card.

If you run an operator account, Stern knows which venue each game sits on — but its venue list is its own, so Pinventory will not guess which of your locations a Stern one means.

Under "Stern location activity" on the Data & Integrations tab in Settings, pick the matching Pinventory location beside each Stern venue. From then on, any machine the sync discovers there is added straight onto that location instead of arriving unassigned.

Linking never moves a game you have already placed, so you stay in charge of where your fleet lives. Change a mapping whenever you like; it only affects what the sync finds next.

Open a machine to see its Stern facts under the title: the installed code version, whether Stern has it out of service, and how many tech alerts are active right now.

Imported meters sit on the machine's Audits tab beside any readings you record by hand, so they feed the same reports. The Issues tab leads with the machine's Stern tech alert history.

Stern publishes each location's meter readings as one file covering a week at a time, and limits how many times you can download it. Pinventory takes each file once and waits for the next one, so a reading you record by hand mid-week is still the fresher number. The Audits column on the location activity card shows when each location last came through, and reads Off at Stern when Stern has turned that location's download off.

When a machine reports a serious fault, Pinventory creates an issue for it and sends a push notification. That covers node board failures, failed code updates, over-current faults, SD card errors, mechanism faults, and missing balls.

An alert Pinventory does not recognize still creates an issue, quietly, so nothing real slips by. Only one open issue exists per fault. When the same fault fires again, the open issue counts it instead of stacking a duplicate — an issue that reads "reported 14 times, last an hour ago" tells you which game needs a visit. Resolving the issue re-arms it, so a genuine recurrence after a fix opens a fresh one.

Three kinds of alert are logged on the machine without creating anything. Check Switch notices are Stern's noisiest family and usually mean a rarely-hit switch rather than a broken one. Coin door openings are normal during a collection. Weak Wi-Fi notices are not a fault with the game.

Some faults clear on their own. A stuck ball is the classic: the game launches a replacement ball and keeps earning, and the stuck one often frees itself later. When Stern reports a machine has no active alerts any more, its open machine-alert issues gain a note saying it recovered on its own, with the time. The issue stays open — a machine saying it feels fine is not the same as someone having fixed it. On a missing-ball issue, Resolve then closes it in one tap with no maintenance log, because there is no repair to record. On other kinds — a node board, a mechanism — Resolve still opens the maintenance log, because a machine that stopped complaining about its node board usually means someone replaced the node board, and that repair belongs on the record.

The all-clear is machine-wide, and Pinventory is strict about it: while ANY alert is active on the game — even a logged-only one like a weak Wi-Fi notice — it won't claim the machine recovered. And a machine that has gone offline doesn't count as recovered either; unplugging a game with the ball still stuck in it proves nothing. Better a note that arrives late than one that lies.

Missing-ball issues go one step further on operator accounts. If the machine stays clear for a solid stretch across several syncs, nobody has touched the issue, and the fault is not a repeat offender, Pinventory resolves it by itself and marks it "Cleared itself" so the history never pretends a person did work they didn't. Reopening such an issue is final: once you reopen it, Pinventory never auto-resolves that issue again.

A game that keeps eating balls is different. The count carries across self-cleared issues, so by the third recurrence in a week the issue stays open no matter what the machine reports — one accumulating record that reads "reported 14 times" beats a trail of issues that look handled but aren't. Only after a full quiet week does a clear machine close it out.

The machine's Issues tab leads with its Stern tech alert history. When a Check Switch notice turns out to be real, such as a flipper end-of-stroke switch that actually died, press Log issue on that alert row.

Each fault shows once, with a count of how many times it fired and the date it last fired. The five most recent faults show first. Press Show all to see the rest.

The issue carries the alert text and the machine. The same one-open-issue rule applies, so pressing it twice tells you an issue is already open instead of making a copy.

Press Disconnect on the integration card to remove your stored Insider login. You can do this even after a subscription lapses, so your password is never stuck in Pinventory.

Your machines, meter readings, and alert history all stay. Only the live facts are cleared, because nothing refreshes them once the sync stops.