Xbox One Controller - Common No Power Fault?

[paul_g_787]

Hi Everyone. Maybe someone could help?

I have been given a box of old gaming controllers from a local gaming shop that went out of business.

I have been going through them and fixing what I can, however 19/23 Xbox One controllers all appear to have this same common failure. The fault being they are dead, no power, no life at all, zip, nada! 
Apparently these were all brought in by customers that said "they just wouldn't switch back on". 

So I tried them all via USB power, a few of them work using a USB cable but via battery there is absolutely nothing at all.

So I hooked each and every one up using my bench power supply onto the battery terminals. Setting it to 5V as indicated on the label on the controller then creeping the current up slowly. (Max 480mA indicated on the label on the controller).
The result is that 100% of them cause the power supply voltage to drop to 0V and it goes into constant current mode.

So to me it seems like a dead short somewhere.

Has anyone got any experience with these at all that could point me in the right direction?
Any service manuals or schematics?

Most of the controllers are "Model 1537" and two of them are "Model 7697".

Thank you!

[lugaw]

Increase the current and check which bypass capacitor heats up or which IC heats up.  You can use a freeze can to have frost on the board to find the hotspot if you don't have an IR camera.

[paul_g_787]

Increase the current and check which bypass capacitor heats up or which IC heats up.  You can use a freeze can to have frost on the board to find the hotspot if you don't have an IR camera.

OK this was a good call regarding a bypass capacitor!

I used IPA on the PCB and powered up the controller and the IPA immediately boiled and evaporated over C33 near the right analog stick.

I measured this capacitor and it was reading 1.2Ω DC and 2.6µF. On another working controller of the same model this was 100µF and OL on the Ω reading.

I have a couple of beyond-repair controllers to use as donor units and I "borrowed" a C33 off one of these and swapped it for the faulty one and tada! This controller worked!

I have repaired 3 controllers so far this way and they are now working and powering up.

I will go through the rest of the controllers and see what results I get.

The only reaming issue is they all suffer from slight stick drift. I have ordered some of those "stick drift mod" PCBs from eBay to see if they are any good.
They are essentially a parallel potentiometer on each axis (I would guess probable 50K or higher) so that you can tweak the centre position on the original pot.

[Mario87]

The only reaming issue is they all suffer from slight stick drift. I have ordered some of those "stick drift mod" PCBs from eBay to see if they are any good.
They are essentially a parallel potentiometer on each axis (I would guess probable 50K or higher) so that you can tweak the centre position on the original pot.

Don't both with those PCB's they are a bodge at best, the root cause is the carbon film on the stick potentiometers wears away and the resistance value changes so the controller logic thinks its in a different position than it is, that board from eBay just introduces an offset, but does not fix the problem.

Buy some new sticks and swap the carbon potentiometers or see if you can buy the pots on their own.

£3.90 for 10pcs on eBay for the replacement pots...

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/284784858189?chn=ps&mkevt=1&mkcid=28

[paul_g_787]

The only reaming issue is they all suffer from slight stick drift. I have ordered some of those "stick drift mod" PCBs from eBay to see if they are any good.
They are essentially a parallel potentiometer on each axis (I would guess probable 50K or higher) so that you can tweak the centre position on the original pot.

Don't both with those PCB's they are a bodge at best, the root cause is the carbon film on the stick potentiometers wears away and the resistance value changes so the controller logic thinks its in a different position than it is, that board from eBay just introduces an offset, but does not fix the problem.

Buy some new sticks and swap the carbon potentiometers or see if you can buy the pots on their own.

£3.90 for 10pcs on eBay for the replacement pots...

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/284784858189?chn=ps&mkevt=1&mkcid=28

I have tried changing analog sticks on PS4 controllers (also alps sticks) before but never had much success.

The first issue was finding genuine sticks or pots.
All of the complete stick assemblies I have bought from eBay or Ali Express appear to be bootleg. You can tell by comparing them to the original sticks that the build quality is significantly lower, or also the fact that they ar much stiffer to move about that the original sticks.
The problem with the pots was that they would never be perfectly "centered", meaning that the new ones I have tried would have stick drift even when brand new! Perhaps these were also bootleg or just rejected ones that made their way to eBay?

Do you have any suggestions?
Perhaps you know where I can buy directly from ALPS or from an official re-seller?

[Mario87]

There appears to be a selection of ALPS joysticks on RS & Farnell. I have just linked to a random one for example so you will need to do a bit of searching for the right ones but they will be genuine ones for sure.

https://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/joystick-switches/1239577?cm_mmc=UK-PLA-DS3A-_-google-_-CSS_UK_EN_Switches_Whoop-_-Joystick+Switches_Whoop-_-1239577&matchtype=&pla-361175297274&cq_src=google_ads&cq_cmp=9771206593&cq_term=&cq_plac=&cq_net=g&cq_plt=gp&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI2cKj4POy-AIVCOh3Ch3_1gDTEAQYAyABEgJO2vD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

[paul_g_787]

OK so I have replaced the capacitors on all the controllers that had no power and all but two are now working!
One of them I still have an unknown fault. The other one had such bad leaking alkaline batteries the entire PCB is corroded so I will just use it as a donor unit.

So for anyone with this issue, the capacitor I replaced was C33 above the right analogue stick. It is a 100µF non-polarised ceramic bypass capacitor. (one side connected to GND / negative battery terminal).

I was successfully able to measure this capacitor in circuit with my BM786 multimeter and my MESR-100 ESR meter.
The faulty capacitors measured lower values e.g. 5µF, 12µF and they were getting very hot!