Joystick drift has become the bane of gamers across every single platform,
whether you have the original Nintendo Switch Joy-Con
or the latest the massive Elite 5000 for the PlayStation five.
The end result appears to be the same.
These sticks will eventually wear out and start to drift.
Now we've taken a detailed look into this issue for both the Nintendo
Switch and PlayStation five controllers.
And we found
the drift
was mainly caused by the gradual wear on the resistive elements
inside the thumbstick housing.
It's expected the components will eventually fail,
but the reason these things have been causing
such a fuss is the extremely limited lifespan of the thumbsticks
a mere 2 million cycles that could potentially see a controller failing in
as little as four months based on only 2 hours of gameplay a day.
Needless to say, this is a problem and it's been a problem for far too long now.
But there may be some good news.
We're seeing some interesting hardware being released,
which prompted us to take another look at the state of gaming controllers.
First things first.
What does Joy-Con drift look like?
No, I don't mean what it looks like in Zelda.
We've covered that.
What does it look like at the board level?
Let's take a look at the cause of drift and current generation console controllers
so we can better understand the possible solutions.
These thumbsticks are made up of several consumable components the biggest culprit
for drift issues being the potentiometers or parts for shorts.
Each Thumbstick has two ports inside the plastic casing, one
for the X axes that's left and right and one for the Y-axis up and down.
A potentiometer is just a variable resistor, and these ones are rated at ten
kms. The voltage entering the potentiometers 1.8 volts.
Through this pin, the wiper sets the resistance
on the potentiometer, which in turn defines the voltage.
This analog signal is then processed into a digital signal
by another chip and sent to your console for further processing.
Let's see what happens when we check the voltage.
This being output while the stick is centered.
This is interpreted as the central point.
So your character shouldn't be moving on screen.
Now watch what happens when I move the stick and recenter
the value for the center. Point has changed.
And again, these variations
can be corrected by software if it remains constant and predictable.
Drift is introduced when that variation becomes too great
or too unpredictable for the software to correct.
So what's the alternative? Well, Flight SIM
and drone enthusiasts will tell you that it's hall effect sensors.
What's the whole effect?
Basically, it's a phenomenon that allows us to manipulate voltage
using magnetic fields and was first discovered in 1879
by American physicist and pro gamer Edwin Hall.
What's special about hall effect sensors is that they eliminate
the physical contact between the wiper and the resistor.
Unlike Potentiometers, there's no scraping.
Only the power of miracles.
Magnetism.
Billy Kit released the King Kong two pro in 2021, marking the first time
hall sensors have been used in a gaming controller since 2006.
Let's open up the controller and have a closer look.
The innards are notably simpler than a ps5 controller.
Everything is pretty accessible.
The battery uses a two pin connector, which is fantastic.
And getting to the thumb six
themselves is pretty easy.
The first thing you'll notice about the thumbstick is the form factor.
On the outside, it looks exactly like an alpha alpine pop sensor.
We think this form factor was maintained, so it can very easily be integrated
into existing circuits and designs.
Let's take a look at the Thumbstick housing
and see what's behind these blue covers.
Where there are hole sensors, there are magnets.
The way the magnets is aligned horizontally is important.
As the stick is moved, you'll either have the negative pull of the magnet
closer to the sensor or the positive pole of the magnet closer to the sensor.
And that's it.
We need to disorder one of these sticks to get a better idea of what's happening.
Once the component is off,
we can immediately see the two tiny hall sensors, one for each axes.
Note that each sensor has three pins, just like a potentiometer.
Here we have voltage in ground and voltage out.
Let's plug this board in.
And with the help of gamepad tester icon, we can take a look at how those sensors
work.
This top sensor controls the left right movement, which is the x axis.
Watch what happens as I simulate the movement of the thumbstick
with just the magnet without touching any component on the board.
We're pushing the imaginary thumbstick to the left and right.
The sensors in these controllers are linear ratio metrical sensors.
Now, that sounds complicated, but really all it means is that
the sensors outputs a predictable and repeatable voltage.
We can see this in action.
There's 3.3 volts going in on this pin and dead center
outputs 1.78 volts on the output pin.
Now watch what happens.
The output voltage as we simulate thumbstick up and thumbstick down.
The linear portion is the gradual increase and decrease in voltage.
The output voltage is an analog signal which has to be converted
to a digital signal.
It's then forwarded to your console and at that point your console passes
this on to the game, which interprets it as movement.
The question remains,
what does this mean for the average gamer?
Regardless of which platform you're on, we can say
without a shadow of a doubt that there is a solution to the drift problem. Now,
other manufacturers pick up the solution or not is entirely
up to them.