![]() ![]() Nintendo has been facing backlash over Joy-Con drift for years, last year Microsoft had a class-action lawsuit filed against it for Xbox controller drift, and now Sony is facing its own legal trouble after PS5 DualSense controllers are showing the same issues only a few months after launch. With more and more reports of drift popping up day after day, there’s got to be a systemic problem happening somewhere though. There could have been an error in the manufacturing process causing issues with the track right out of the box without taking the controller apart and physically testing the signal from the potentiometer, it’s nearly impossible to tell. The conductive material along the track could be damaged from wear and tear, which would change the resistance across certain parts of it, triggering a bad signal. When we’re experiencing stick drift, something is causing that current value to change when we’re not actually changing the stick position.This could happen for countless reasons: there could be something like dust or skin flakes along the resistive track or on the wiper, which would change the flow of current between the contacts in an unpredictable way. When working properly, there’s a 1-to-1 relationship between the current being reported and the position of the stick. It then turns that information over to the game console to move forward, spin your camera, or do whatever the game designers want that stick motion to represent. Your controller registers the current values from each wheel, and reports those as the x and y positions of your stick. Every different orientation results in a different amount of current, and a unique signal. If you just nudge it a little bit, the wiper moves to use only a small part of the track’s surface for the path the current will flow over. If you jam the stick to the side, it turns the wheel all the way, such that the entire resistive track is used to complete the path for the circuit. ![]() Remember, the more resistive material in the circuit, the lower the current. The amount of resistive material the current has to flow through is determined by the orientation of the wheel, and a small piece of metal called a wiper that moves with it, choosing where along the track the connection to the circuit is made. Those wheels are in contact with a track of resistive material, and act similarly to how the buttons fill in the gap in a circuit the difference here is that it’s not just an on or off signal. When you press your control stick, you’re actually turning two small wheels underneath it in an electrical component called a potentiometer. We accomplish this in electronics by varying the amount of current generated for different stick inputs. We need a signal that is analogous to the input, which is where we get the term ‘analog stick’ from. Drift HappensFor a thumbstick though, we need to know not just if it’s been pressed, but by how much and in which direction. That particular kind of input is either on or off, represented by a signal that reports either 0 or 1, which we call a digital signal. That fills in a gap and completes the circuit allowing current to flow, generating a signal that reports the button has been pressed. For example: if you press down on a button, a conductive element is brought into contact with the circuit board. Essentially, the more resistive material energy has to flow through, the lower the current. Resistive elements still conduct current, but they slow and reduce the overall current that moves along that particular path, so we can send different amounts of energy to different parts of the circuit board depending on the job we need accomplished. Gaps make a break in the circuit, so that the current will only flow if something is inserted to complete it. We limit that electric current’s flow by putting either resistive elements or gaps across the circuit board. That current has to be precisely controlled, because if it runs unrestricted it burns through your energy supply incredibly fast and generates a ton of heat, which can damage the components and leave your device broken and useless.
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