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1 PS4 controller left stick potentiometer replacement issue
Hi,
So I recently replaced the 3-legged potentiometers on the left stick because it began heavily drifting. I bought the replacements from https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/174967976757
They arrived today, so I took the 2 potentiometers off the joystick and soldered them to the controller PCB.
During testing, I noticed two issues. The 1st is the stick is not resting in the centre like before. It's slightly off.
The 2nd issue is the movement seems laggy. It is not smooth. I used https://hardwaretester.com/gamepad to test the movement. If I run the circularity test, I get 22% avg error on the left stick. The right gets 8%, so this increase is quite huge.
Here's a clip showing the movement: https://streamable.com/7mqc6i
As you can see, the left stick does not move smoothly. The right does.
My biggest gripe is the lack of smooth movement. Any idea why this is happening? Are the replacements just bad, or is there something I need to do?
I'd appreciate any help.
EDIT:
Took a look inside some of the replacement potentiometers and this is what they look like: https://i.imgur.com/8VqGnvr.png
Is that normal? I've looked inside the original potentiometers and the tracks are all black. Could this be causing the stick issues?
Is this a good question?
2 Comments
Did you soldered them with hot air? If you didn't clean from old solder the holes to place them first and then solder them and used directly hot air to solder them, maybe the plastic parts got damaged inside the mechanism. Or maybe try clean possible flux remains that are inside the mechanism too with some alcohol or contact cleaner.
by ilias diolitsis
@iliasdiolitsis I did not use hot air. I applied leaded solder to the joints and then used the Engineer SS-02 solder sucker to remove the solder from the PCB. It did a good job at removing it. The holes were clear. So the sticks themselves shouldn't have been exposed to heat stress or damage.
I updated my post with a picture of what the inside of the replacement potentiometers look like. The tracks are not all black like the originals. I'm wondering if this could be the issue.
I've also been reading that the analog sticks are calibrated at the factory and the data is stored directly to the controller's firmware. Replacement potentiometers may need to be calibrated in the same manner.
So right now potential causes could be bad replacements (it was from eBay, was cheap and doesn't seem to be from any particular brand) and/or the sticks need re-calibrating to work properly with the replacement potentiometers.
I took the potentiometers off again and I'm now debating what to do next.
by vCore