Ok I'm going to show how I turned my right Joycon into a jig. This is really handy as I'll never lose my jig. This is aimed at beginers.

You'll need a tripoint y00 scredriver, a phillips ph00 screwdriver and some electro conductive paint (you can use foil, wire or solder.... I'll explian why I used the paint later). Youll also need cardboard and tape.

Disclaimer: I'm not responsible for anything that goes wrong. It shouldn't if you do it right and it worked for me.


Firstly if your using cardboard pop a hole in it slightly bigger than the circumference of the joycon. This will allow your joycon to lie flat as you work on it.

Put some tape on the joycon release button (optional). Then undow the 4 Tripoint screws and undoe the case carefully. The case unfolds so the joycon rail should be in the middle.

Now you want to unscrew the back cover from the joycon rail (one phillips screw). Take note that there is a guide pin at the opposite end of the case. Be careful not to lose the joycon release button.

Now that done tape the joycon rail and the main body to the card. Space them out a little. Keep the back cover handy, make sure the release button is in the right position If you taped it down you should be ok. If it falls out it has a notch so has to go back in the right position (keep turning it you'll know when you get it right). Were also going to remove the sponge pad with some tweezers (plastic if possible). Put the sponge pad into the back cover for now.

Ok now get your paintbrush/wire etc. What we are trying to do is join the 2 points I've highlighted together. I'm using electroconductive paint. Because the area is so small I'm actually using my phone (use the flash too) to zoom in so I can see where to put the paint. This is a live photo, I'm approaching the pins from the right as there is nothing other than plastic on that side so I won't bridge connections I shouldn't. It doesn't really matter if the paint goes on the plastic. If you do make a mistake wipe the paint off with kitchen roll and try again.

Below is what the finished product looked like

You can see the paint is/was wet. Its still a little glossy, it takes about 30 min to dry. You can use a hair dryer (don't use full power)... it takes about 2 min with a hair dryer. Once dry the paint will matt slightly (please be aware there are different paints). The paint won't conduct unless its dry and also when we replace the sponge it'll probably soak it up. Below is a dried image. Make sure you haven't briged any of the other pins. It shouldn't matter too much if you go over one of the lines as the conductive material is on the other side of the ribbon cable. I still feel its good practice not too. The lines I've gone over are the ones that correspond to the pins I wanted to bridge anyway.

Tip: Once dry you can add a very small piece of insulation tape to cover the paint. The paint isn't waterproof and is at best water resistant (small amounts of water and condensation shouldn't affect it). This shouldn't be necessary, but will add longevity. After that the mod should be at least more water proof than the rest of the joycon.

Ok That's pretty much it. Replace the sponge pad. Then screw the back cover back to the joycon rail. Use the guide pin to put it in place first.

Finally remove all the tape clip the joycon back together being very careful not to catch any of the cables. Then screw back in the tri point screws

OK so now an explanation of why I used conductive paint.

Firstly My soldering skills are average at best so I was never going to solder this. Even someone skilled could make a mistake and maybe melt the ribbon cable. Then there's the tinfoil/wire/tape option. This option is fine and lots of people have done it. I'd just worry that one day that wire or tinfoil would come out playing switch sports and potentially damage the switch. I will say this is unlikely but the conductive paint is designed for applications like this.... I'd describe it as a semi-permanent solution. Its not as permanent as solder, but a lot easier to work with. I couldn't even find my small paint brush so I actually used my daughters paintbrush (6 years old) for water colours.

There is also a residual resistance in conductive paint compared with wire, solder or tinfoil. This will offer some protection against "feedback". I believe this isn't a problem since fw6.0 so I have been unable to test how effective this is. It may act as a complete barrier like a switch or the resistance may be miniscule.

Also I believe you can buy a conductive glue... but I've not used or tested it.

Anyway I thought I'd share as I've just seen an advert for a Joycon jig on eBay and the price was shocking!

If one of the Chosen almost Godly people at the top of GBATEMP wishes to promote us use this guide in the pins it'd be an honour.... I just hope someone finds this useful

 

[Jacobh]

Jigs are great but for the impatient/cheapskate begginer this is better than foil I'd say

Yeah the guide is good if you are comfortable opening up your joy cons. I was more thinking a true beginner might not have a tri-wing screw driver or have ever opened up any electronics before.

 

[binkinator]

Yeah the guide is good if you are comfortable opening up your joy cons. I was more thinking a true beginner might not have a tri-wing screw driver or have ever opened up any electronics before.

I refuse to hang out with people who don’t have a tri-wing within arms reach at all times. Just North of worthless.

 

[User154]

Yeah the guide is good if you are comfortable opening up your joy cons. I was more thinking a true beginner might not have a tri-wing screw driver or have ever opened up any electronics before.

Yeah thats true I forget sometimes not everyone is comfortable opening up devices.

My thinking was that if you were careful about opening the shell this would be safer than foil, and in the event that it all goes wrong a joycon is cheaper and easier to replace than the main console

 

[Dust2dust]

For “beginners” spending $5 on a jig might be better then opening up their joycons.

But where's the fun in that?

... and even a reel switch which is the coolest to me, you use a magnet to "press" the button like with the 3DS!!

I was using a reed switch before, but unfortunately I found this mod to be unreliable. I had a 50% chance of getting into RCM. The other 50% of the time, I was just booting normally into sysnand. I was using a pretty strong magnet, too. I could see the joycon "disconnecting" in the controller screen of HOS when I was approaching the magnet, but for some reason, it only worked half of the time in real use to get into RCM. Maybe my reed switch was just crap. Anyway, I went back to the good old simple mod I linked above. This one works 100% of the time. It never failed even once... practically as good as autoRCM.

 

[Kallim]

I refuse to hang out with people who don’t have a tri-wing within arms reach at all times. Just North of worthless.

You seem like a good pool of all knowledge. Plus your one of the chosen GBATEMP gurus.

How much do you know about resistors, ohms law and calculating voltage drop?

The reason I asked is I started the electro conductive paint has a resistance of about 55ohms. If you use tinfoil it's only nano ohms so virtually no resistance. So whist the 55 ohms is miniscule compared to say soldering a 10k resistor (if you grounded through pin 7). It's absolutely huge compared with tinfoil or solder.

My question is.... Would a using say a 55ohm resistor between pins 9 and 10 effectively act as a switch because the voltage dedicated and assigned to those pins is so low whilst the joycon is in use??

My theory is While not in use when you first turn on it probably pushes a greater voltage from the unit itself. I'm not sure how much of that goes through the jig when you boot into RCM.

But it could be a hidden gem to this method. When I first did it I was just looking to see if the paint would bridge the contacts I didn't know if the natural resistance in the paint would stop it going into RCM mode.... But it works perfectly and everything updates and connects as it should.

I've looked a little more into the firmware issues and people had mixed results, my hope is that the paint will resist enough to act as a complete barrier. Unfortunately I haven't done any calculations like this for 30 years (since my commodore 64 days). And I've forgotten how.

I will say if anyone has a joycon on old firmware and has trouble with their mod let me know. If you live near Manchester (UK) I might even mod it free in the interests of science. If it accidentally solves that problem and I waterproof it (it's already slightly water resistant) then this beginners becomes a no brainer to me.

Post automatically merged: Mar 11, 2023

You seem like a good pool of all knowledge. Plus your one of the chosen GBATEMP gurus.

How much do you know about resistors, ohms law and calculating voltage drop?

The reason I asked is I started the electro conductive paint has a resistance of about 55ohms. If you use tinfoil it's only nano ohms so virtually no resistance. So whist the 55 ohms is miniscule compared to say soldering a 10k resistor (if you grounded through pin 7). It's absolutely huge compared with tinfoil or solder.

My question is.... Would a using say a 55ohm resistor between pins 9 and 10 effectively act as a switch because the voltage dedicated and assigned to those pins is so low whilst the joycon is in use??

My theory is While not in use when you first turn on it probably pushes a greater voltage from the unit itself. I'm not sure how much of that goes through the jig when you boot into RCM.

But it could be a hidden gem to this method. When I first did it I was just looking to see if the paint would bridge the contacts I didn't know if the natural resistance in the paint would stop it going into RCM mode.... But it works perfectly and everything updates and connects as it should.

I've looked a little more into the firmware issues and people had mixed results, my hope is that the paint will resist enough to act as a complete barrier. Unfortunately I haven't done any calculations like this for 30 years (since my commodore 64 days). And I've forgotten how.

I will say if anyone has a joycon on old firmware and has trouble with their mod let me know. If you live near Manchester (UK) I might even mod it free in the interests of science. If it accidentally solves that problem and I waterproof it (it's already slightly water resistant) then this beginners becomes a no brainer to me.

I should probably say the joycon battery is 3.7v and 0.525 amps but I doubt the whole load would ever go through 1 pin which probably makes the calculation nearly impossible. That's just the maximum that could go through and 50 ohms if anyone wants to chip in?

 

[binkinator]

You seem like a good pool of all knowledge. Plus your one of the chosen GBATEMP gurus.

Did I miss a vote? Cause I would have voted for somebody else.

How much do you know about resistors, ohms law and calculating voltage drop?

The reason I asked is I started the electro conductive paint has a resistance of about 55ohms. If you use tinfoil it's only nano ohms so virtually no resistance. So whist the 55 ohms is miniscule compared to say soldering a 10k resistor (if you grounded through pin 7). It's absolutely huge compared with tinfoil or solder.

My question is.... Would a using say a 55ohm resistor between pins 9 and 10 effectively act as a switch because the voltage dedicated and assigned to those pins is so low whilst the joycon is in use??

My theory is While not in use when you first turn on it probably pushes a greater voltage from the unit itself. I'm not sure how much of that goes through the jig when you boot into RCM.

But it could be a hidden gem to this method. When I first did it I was just looking to see if the paint would bridge the contacts I didn't know if the natural resistance in the paint would stop it going into RCM mode.... But it works perfectly and everything updates and connects as it should.

I've looked a little more into the firmware issues and people had mixed results, my hope is that the paint will resist enough to act as a complete barrier. Unfortunately I haven't done any calculations like this for 30 years (since my commodore 64 days). And I've forgotten how.

I will say if anyone has a joycon on old firmware and has trouble with their mod let me know. If you live near Manchester (UK) I might even mod it free in the interests of science. If it accidentally solves that problem and I waterproof it (it's already slightly water resistant) then this beginners becomes a no brainer to me.

Post automatically merged: Mar 11, 2023

I should probably say the joycon battery is 3.7v and 0.525 amps but I doubt the whole load would ever go through 1 pin which probably makes the calculation nearly impossible. That's just the maximum that could go through and 50 ohms if anyone wants to chip in?

I have mine soldered directly but it’s in an unused Joycon shell so playability isn’t a concern.

This method (albeit with solder) was discussed over here:

https://noirscape.github.io/RCM-Guide/

They do recommend using a 10k resistor. I honestly don’t believe anyone ohm’d this out to come up with proper numbers. They just threw in a load so it wasn’t a direct short in hopes it wouldn’t blow anything up.

I wasn‘t around for 6.0.0 so the issues might be a real thing but of the past. I can’t imagine there are too many folks on that old a release these days but who knows. There does appear to be a work around (remove battery) so it’s not a Brick risk or anything.

I‘m surprised the paint has that much resistance to be honest. Since we don’t really know what the correct ohms should actually be I think we’re going to need a Guinea pig. Know of anybody who can take one for the team?

 

[Kallim]

Just a quick update (mainly useless information)

I drew a line about 5mm long on a piece of card it tested at about 180 Ohms. I also drew a line about 4cm long it tested at about 1500 ohms. Now test won't be accurate. For starters I only have a cheapo Chinese multimeter. But also the Ohms changed depending on how hard I dug the multimeter points into the card.

This is just to let you know every time you do this the resistance won't be the same . The Thickness of the paint and the distance affect the result.

I tested a piece of tinfoil and it came up between 0 and 0.5 ohm (kept changing between the 2).... so basically nil. But obviously there is a resistance. However I've done 9 of these now. We have 3 and I've done 6 for friends. In every case the "joycon Jig" has worked and its worked without disconnect issues.

I would still like to try an early fw one if someone wants to use their Joycon as a guinea pig?? If so PM me (will need to be UK).

 

[gbazone]

With AutoRCM this is so unnecessary. Just use some wire. I made a thread about it five years ago

https://gbatemp.net/threads/can-som...in-10-without-taking-apart-the-joycon.501933/

 

[Kallim]

With AutoRCM this is so unnecessary. Just use some wire. I made a thread about it five years ago

https://gbatemp.net/threads/can-som...in-10-without-taking-apart-the-joycon.501933/

Auto RCM isnt for everyone. I used this method initially as I modded a switch for a girl at work who didn't have much cash to treat her son.

He couldn't understand or tell the difference between off and auto RCM and sometimes the switch wouldn't have enough charge to boot atmosphere.

It just seemed the easiest way to use his switch modded. I gave them my RCM loader. I did actually think about soldering the RCM loader into the inside of his switch (to act like a trinket).... But decided not to risk it (not my switch after all). I set it to auto boot atmosphere from Hekate so be couldn't easily mess with Hekate settings (but I only put fusee.bin on the RCM loader anyway). The other problem would be he'd need to launch stock from Hekate rather than ofw. This in itself wasn't an issue but I don't really want him messing with Hekate. I suppose I could auto boot stock from Hekate and use fusee.bin as a 2nd payload?? Seems more complex that way for a 10 year old.

 

[RetroGamer360]

I literally just grabbed like a piece of foil and stuck it in the pins at the bottom of my right joy con and it was in RCM immediately first try..

 

[Kallim]

I literally just grabbed like a piece of foil and stuck it in the pins at the bottom of my right joy con and it was in RCM immediately first try..

This works but it can break the switch. One of the pins has voltage. If your going to do it keep the tinfoil towards the back of the switch and hope it doesn't move.

 

[RetroGamer360]

This works but it can break the switch. One of the pins has voltage. If your going to do it keep the tinfoil towards the back of the switch and hope it doesn't move.

then that's probably why I had to repair my right side rail because the voltages were cut off

 

[gbazone]

I put one end of a wire on the pin, and the other on the black metal grill of the fan vent to use as a ground.