How To Fix Index Controllers Thumbstick Drift & Thumbstick Replacement

it's time to repair this wish me luck [Music] welcome back to i made this today today as i said in the intro we are going to be repairing this this my friends is an index controller notoriously index controllers have an issue with their joysticks where they pretty much break down and stop working and stop being responsive in the case of mine the entire like upper half of the joystick would just not register so you couldn't move you couldn't run you couldn't run through the open fields of vr game and it really upset me because these are very very very expensive and also i'm just outside of my warranty on them now um i actually had one replaced the other controller only about six months ago but since then my warranty has now died and now this one died and i was upset to say the least but i believe in fixing things guys i can honestly tell you i haven't done any soldering or any anything even remotely close to this in a very very long time the closest i've gotten to do an electronics on this scale was when i took a game boy apart for the painting video a couple of months back i don't think they sit in the same level of stripping down a intricate piece of technology really actually even slightly close to each other i also haven't done any like actual electronics work like soldering or anything like that in such a long time so for me this was a very scary venture but i was looking at two things one this controller is broken anyway at this point it's no good to anyone unless you want to repair it two the other one's very expensive it's like 259 pounds to um to actually buy a new set of these they've actually come down in price recently which is nice um but yeah 259 quid to buy controllers new or 2 pound 50 for this part so i thought to myself i'll give it a blooming go now i have to say i went into this fairly blind there is the couple of tutorials online that i found that were kind of helpful but i thought i'll put this together and show you that basically if i can do it anybody can do it and take this challenge on for yourself and as i said the controller's bust anyway worst case scenario it's still broken probably more broken at that point but still more you know it's it's non-usable anyway so who cares i will but anyway i don't want to jib jab too much at the beginning of this video let's just jump straight into this um as i've said i have zero experience in this so if i can succeed at this then you definitely can and spoiler there would be no video if i didn't succeed at this so um me i now have an index controller that works that's weird let's just start the video so as you can see here i'm testing the joystick in the diagnosis and it's left and right it's fine but when you go to do an up and down motion it's either not registering it or it's just barely registering it's it's absolutely crazy this thing degraded over the period of a week and it went from noticeable issue to i'm not working anymore every other button on this controller is working perfectly fine it's literally just a joystick and it's a super common issue on these controllers now you've got the diagnostics now we can see how it goes let's tear this thing down now to start with get a flat bit pop it underneath the joystick and you can just start the prying process to get the front cover off because only a clip on isn't too bad to take me a couple of attempts to find the right spot but once you get it you'll get a frightening click that will make you think you've broken it but don't worry you haven't it's all okay uh next you want to get a spudger or like like what i've got here like a little metal spudger and you just want to pop off that cover uh work around very gently the top there is a ribbon cable so do not go aggressive on this it's not just a front plate it also has all of the capacitive sensors and stuff and that ribbon cable if you break it there's no real going back from it so just be gentle up top here you can see that there is that ribbon cable i'm speaking about and uh yeah that's the bit you desperately don't want to break so just pry that out gently it just is a little push fit so slides on out that's the front section diddly done next inside you'll see that there are three screws we want to get to next they are all of the t4 variety undo those keep them to one side um majority every screw in here is t4 there are two screws that are t3 but i'll show you those when we actually get to that part next you want to pop up this ribbon cable use a pair of tweezers just literally pry it up a little bit because it gives you a bit more working room and again getting there with your fingers or if you've got some nice rubber tweezers or something like that get in there with those and pop that cable out and this is for the thumb capacitor on the middle touch screen once you have that then you want to get your spudger again and you want to just very very gently get underneath it this thing is glued down and you just want to pry this off this definitely could break if you're not gentle so just take your time get in underneath it pop it off once you release the glue honestly at that part it's just like thank god it's over but it's not too bad just take your time that's all i can say i stress that as much as i can take time next we have another t4 screw that we want to take out of this part which is part of the um the actual ratcheting system for the uh the straps that go on the index controllers now once you've got that off you'll see that there is a spring and two more screws these are the t3 screws t3 screws sorry pop those out but definitely keep a bit of pressure down on that spring because the last thing you'd want to happen is that i think fire out there across your office or bedroom or wherever you're doing this and once it's gone it's gone so once you've got those two screws out you can pop out this strap all together be done with that and then very gently lift up your thumb release that spring get it on out of there remember the orientation it was in very very important because it's a lot easier to get it back in at the end of this when you remember how things went that's why i try and be very specific with how i lay out stuff and i recommend it do the same thing now we can get a pair of tweezers just gently lift out the ratcheting system for the strap pop it to one side again even if it falls apart that's fine just remember the orientation it was in i'm just very meticulous when i do stuff like this because i just want to remember the orientation of everything now at this point we can pop out this top motherboard and well the whole motherboard collection shall we say again there are ribbon cables there are two there's one lego style one and one ribbon cable underneath this so don't just yank on this thing take your time be slow like a pony woman and pop out this top ribbon cable the next one's like a lego style one so i did it with a spudger and just sort of pop that out there once it's released the entire index body can be you know disposed off for the meanwhile pop to one side and now we're left with is the sort of the brain of the controller at this point you want to pop off the joystick now this does have another ribbon cable inside of it so be really gentle when you do this it's the one for the capacitive touch sensor at the top of the thumb stick so don't just yank on it because you might tear that cable right off but that would be really sucky to go through this and do that once again the theme of the entire thing be gentle there's one more ribbon cable at the back that you can pop out so just grab a pair of tweezers or whatever you feel comfortable doing it with and pop that back one out there are several more screws in the back they are t3 so take those out and i believe there's three of them now these screws try and keep separate they are slightly longer than the rest of the screws that you take out so again remember where you got them from take them out gently caress it and put them in a special spot because like say they're slightly longer and the last thing you want to do is put it back together and bust through something because you've mixed up your screws once you have these out the front section of the motherboard will now come free uh inside of there there is a little gasket you got one more ribbon cable to pop out this one's a bit of a beast and it's also a little bit tighter i found than the other ones so just be aware of that again be gentle uh once you've done that that's the whole front part of all the capacitive touch ribbon cables and stuff dealt with now this is the offending subject the joystick man this thing's cheap af is just plasticky is so jank the new one was much better at this point you can get into the soldering while desoldering of the old part get that out clean it up i did a bit of a janky job i'm aware that there are products that you can get that would have been much better like some fluxes that would have kept it liquidy for longer i didn't have any of those things i just desold that by hand took a long time a lot of effort you could have made it easier on yourself with the right products but i just don't have the knowledge to do those things now put the new one in to the holes and resolder it back together and life is good see as long as you've got all those pins through life's good now it's not the neatest job but i did it same with the soldering get it re-soldered and at that point you just need to literally reverse everything we've done to this point put it all back together and you've got yourselves some working controllers look at this man it works beautifully everything about it is back to normal how it was the day i got out of the box and i could not be more happy man it works it works so there it is guys we now have a fully working index controller once again with a joystick that actually works and for future reference if it ever happens again then i now know how to fix it one thing i will say though is man i can see why they break down they use the cheapest little joystick known to mankind i mean it probably saves them a massive amount of money in the long run with building these things but they're all plastic so all of the internal workings of the joystick itself all plastic whereas the replacement one that i bought was entirely metal even down to all of the like responding bits that go inside of it god i don't know anything to call those bits but just bear with me i don't i am a smooth brain when it comes to this stuff but um but yeah all of my bit that i bought was entirely metal so all of the sheathing that worked on there i'm gonna guess this is gonna last a lot longer than the other one did i'm not entirely sure why they went that route i'm gonna say it's probably money most things are based on money these days but anyway other than that man i've got to say very easy to do man scary and very daunting especially once you initially pop off the front of that index cover and you see inside you're like okay okay okay scary very very scary um but now once you get past that and you realize that you can actually just take a you know just deal with everything pulling those ribbon cables out getting them back in isn't too hard either everything is fiddly take your time if you do attempt this just take your time there is no rush when you're doing something like this daytime be as gentle as you possibly can and try and buy some decent-ish stuff to work with now of course this is different content to what i would normally put out on this channel normally we're doing arts crafts and so on and so on lego whatever but this i felt like again it was taking on a challenge of something that i've never done before and i wanted to give it a go and see if it works and hopefully help out some of you guys next week we'll be back doing the normal regular arty stuff enjoy see you next one goodbye

Channel: I Made This Today

Views: 13,112

Keywords: Valve Index, Index Controller Drift, Controller Drift, Jostick Drift, Thumbstick drift, Knuckles Controllers, Joystick Replacement, Thumbstick replacement

Id: 7ec4Q3koG5Y

Length: 12min 22sec (742 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 20 2021