Hardware Joycon drift... But maybe something worse?

[mewlover10]

Hey everyone, I've been having some problems with my left joycon recently. Firstly to give everyone the best idea of what's going on, I'll list my switch's specs:
-Old unit
-Purchased in Japan
-Most recent update sysnand, 8.1.0 emunand
-Using SX OS's emunand system
-exFAT SD card

Now with that out of the way, let me describe the problem. A while back, I tried to play some smash on my sysnand because I had some friends over and we wanted to play. However whenever I tried to open any game, it would come up with something like "a software error has occurred" or something. Can't remember my particular error message that well. I decided to factory reset my sysnand from recovery mode (so I would keep all my saves and such), since I tried various things and nothing seemed to get any of the games working. The switch now seems to have more trouble connecting to the internet than previously (now can only connect well to the wifi while sitting directly next to the route.). I decided to ignore it, since I don't play much on my sysnand anyways, and went back to playing on my emunand. Everything was fine until maybe a week and a half ago, where my left joycon started to drift downward while I was playing Pokemon Sword. I thought "oh, this is that joycon drift I heard about, that makes sense since I've been spinning in circles a lot to get alcreamies". Switched my left joycon out to my other left joycon (I have two sets of joycons) and the same problem occurred. More than this, the drift over time got worse. At first, it would only drift downwards in the menus of Pokemon Sword. My character in the overworld didn't drift. Eventually it did, but this has only happened twice and hasn't happened since then. Then it started occurring in the home screen. When I went to calibrate my analog stick on my joycon expecting it to show drift, it registers that there's no problems with the joycon. I thought maybe it was a problem with my emunand, so I checked to see if it was causing problems and it wasn't... up until today, where it now also drifts on the sysnand in the same way it does with the emunand. For reference, I have already tried the compressed air method. I have a few questions I want to ask here, then:

1. Has anyone else had this problem, and if so have they solved it?
2. Am I right in assuming due to the circumstances that this would most likely be a problem with the switch itself, not the joycons?
3. Does anyone know if this would indicate some kind of slow hardware failure of any of the chips or such?
4. I'm assuming by this point that I'm going to have to send my switch somewhere for repair. I'd rather not send it to nintendo, since I've hacked it, so I'd appreciate it if anyone could recommend some places to get my switch repaired.

Thanks for giving this a read, and thanks for any information you can give me! I can also answer questions about my system if you need to know more information.

 

[Rahkeesh]

Are the joycons drifting equally in wireless and when attached? How about when used horizontally in single-joycon, do they drift to the side then? Download joy-con drivers for PC and try testing those via the game controllers properties, do you see drift there?

If all of the above is true, then it is very likely just the physical sticks failing. Drift can be inconsistent so you might have to spend some time on the stick calibration to see it here. Its also common so not out of the question that two went bad around the same time.

 

[mewlover10]

Are the joycons drifting equally in wireless and when attached? How about when used horizontally in single-joycon, do they drift to the side then? Download joy-con drivers for PC and try testing those via the game controllers properties, do you see drift there?

If all of the above is true, then it is very likely just the physical sticks failing. Drift can be inconsistent so you might have to spend some time on the stick calibration to see it here. Its also common so not out of the question that two went bad around the same time.

My first left joycon drifts when attached, as does my second left joycon. When in wireless, my first left joycon drifts, while the other seems to refuse to connect to the console. My first joycon seems to work fine while in the homescreen horizontally, however I cannot play games with it. It disconnects when I play a game (tried to connect to Pokemon Sword and Doraemon: Story of Seasons). Since my second joycon refuses to connect to the console generally, it cannot connect to it in order to test it horizontally. What do you mean by joycon drivers? Thank you for your help. I'll check more with the calibration to see if it starts drifiting in the meantime.

 

[Rahkeesh]

I mean there's a custom driver to use joy-cons on Windows computers. See here: https://github.com/fossephate/JoyCon-Driver . If you see any drift within windows then you can completely rule out the Switch tablet being at fault.

Only certain games support single joy-con play. Usually multiplayer titles will support it even in single player. If you have NSO, I think the NES/SNES app will support single joy-con if nothing else. Other popular games include Mario Oddessy and Mario Kart.

A joy-con can connect physically with a Switch that it is not wirelessly paired with, so that might be an issue for your second joy-con. Also sysnand and emunand can end up counting as different Switches for the purpose of wireless pairing, so you may have to re-pair if you move between the two. Try putting your switch in change grip mode and then press the sync button inside the joy-con rail to re-sync the joycons.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Hey everyone, I've been having some problems with my left joycon recently. Firstly to give everyone the best idea of what's going on, I'll list my switch's specs:
-Old unit
-Purchased in Japan
-Most recent update sysnand, 8.1.0 emunand
-Using SX OS's emunand system
-exFAT SD card

Now with that out of the way, let me describe the problem. A while back, I tried to play some smash on my sysnand because I had some friends over and we wanted to play. However whenever I tried to open any game, it would come up with something like "a software error has occurred" or something. Can't remember my particular error message that well. I decided to factory reset my sysnand from recovery mode (so I would keep all my saves and such), since I tried various things and nothing seemed to get any of the games working. The switch now seems to have more trouble connecting to the internet than previously (now can only connect well to the wifi while sitting directly next to the route.). I decided to ignore it, since I don't play much on my sysnand anyways, and went back to playing on my emunand. Everything was fine until maybe a week and a half ago, where my left joycon started to drift downward while I was playing Pokemon Sword. I thought "oh, this is that joycon drift I heard about, that makes sense since I've been spinning in circles a lot to get alcreamies". Switched my left joycon out to my other left joycon (I have two sets of joycons) and the same problem occurred. More than this, the drift over time got worse. At first, it would only drift downwards in the menus of Pokemon Sword. My character in the overworld didn't drift. Eventually it did, but this has only happened twice and hasn't happened since then. Then it started occurring in the home screen. When I went to calibrate my analog stick on my joycon expecting it to show drift, it registers that there's no problems with the joycon. I thought maybe it was a problem with my emunand, so I checked to see if it was causing problems and it wasn't... up until today, where it now also drifts on the sysnand in the same way it does with the emunand. For reference, I have already tried the compressed air method. I have a few questions I want to ask here, then:

1. Has anyone else had this problem, and if so have they solved it?
2. Am I right in assuming due to the circumstances that this would most likely be a problem with the switch itself, not the joycons?
3. Does anyone know if this would indicate some kind of slow hardware failure of any of the chips or such?
4. I'm assuming by this point that I'm going to have to send my switch somewhere for repair. I'd rather not send it to nintendo, since I've hacked it, so I'd appreciate it if anyone could recommend some places to get my switch repaired.

Thanks for giving this a read, and thanks for any information you can give me! I can also answer questions about my system if you need to know more information.

The Switch has pretty poor wifi signal strength. You can get a LAN adapter for it though, and if that's not an option because the router is too far away, you can get one of those wifi repeaters that plug into the wall and have a LAN port for connecting wired devices. Or you can use a powerline adapter but those are kinda expensive.

Is Smash on a cartridge? Try deleting all the data (game/update/DLC) and reinstalling them, if you pirated it try a nsp from another source and verify it with nspverify to make sure it's not corrupted.

 

[M7L7NK7]

Buy the hori split pro joycons
Stop using exfat

 

[mewlover10]

I mean there's a custom driver to use joy-cons on Windows computers. See here: https://github.com/fossephate/JoyCon-Driver . If you see any drift within windows then you can completely rule out the Switch tablet being at fault.

Only certain games support single joy-con play. Usually multiplayer titles will support it even in single player. If you have NSO, I think the NES/SNES app will support single joy-con if nothing else. Other popular games include Mario Oddessy and Mario Kart.

A joy-con can connect physically with a Switch that it is not wirelessly paired with, so that might be an issue for your second joy-con. Also sysnand and emunand can end up counting as different Switches for the purpose of wireless pairing, so you may have to re-pair if you move between the two. Try putting your switch in change grip mode and then press the sync button inside the joy-con rail to re-sync the joycons.

Managed to get both of them working. Both left joycons still drift even when in horizontal mode. Tried it with the driver, both joycons don't register as drifting. Does this rule out the joycons?

The Switch has pretty poor wifi signal strength. You can get a LAN adapter for it though, and if that's not an option because the router is too far away, you can get one of those wifi repeaters that plug into the wall and have a LAN port for connecting wired devices. Or you can use a powerline adapter but those are kinda expensive.

Is Smash on a cartridge? Try deleting all the data (game/update/DLC) and reinstalling them, if you pirated it try a nsp from another source and verify it with nspverify to make sure it's not corrupted.

Smash was on my sysnand, digital. I tried to reinstall it earlier but my wifi kept failing the download. Might try again soonish. More focused on the joycon problem for now.

 

[Rahkeesh]

The key thing with single joy-con is the direction of the drift. If its a physical stick problem, then joycons that drift downward in vertical mode should drift to the side in horizontal. If they drift downward in both orientations then it can't be hardware based.

Its possible the deadzones in the windows driver are more generous and you won't see mild drift there as easily, so I don't think we can 100% rule it out based on that. I would use the controller properties dialog to test rather than just a game, it should show you some plus signs in a field measuring the location of the sticks.

 

[THCsGameChannel]

Is it really drifting or is it lag? I had the same problem this weekend and coincidentally with Pokemon Sword too. I noticed that sometimes it drifted my bike to the left even after letting the stick go. Or sometimes double pressing a direction in the menus.

I already knew how a drifting joycon feels like and this wasnt the same. A drifting joycon is super noticable on the map of pokemon. Super hard to navigate with a drifting controller.

After ruling that out I found another often occuring problem. Joycon LAG.

I found a video about it and it was 100% the same problem. Try covering up the joycon while testing. Try updating the controllers. They updated the joycon antenna signal with a software update a while ago.

This video explains the joycon lag/desync:


This fixes it:


You dont have to remove the battery just be careful with the flat cables. I used foam that was used as padding from my graphics card box.

 

[Drud1995]

Send your joycons in to Nintendo. They fix them for free now, if you're experiencing drift.