[Solved] PS5 controller blinking orange 3 times

[thesjaakspoiler]

I had an PS5 controller (BDM-040 : CFI-ZCT1J) with some drift issues laying around for quite some while.
I decided to put some hall sensors in it like I have done before with other controllers.
The controller is now blinking 3 times orange when plugging in the battery or the USB-C cable.
After that no response what so ever.
Does anyone have any idea what could be causing this behavior?

Things I already checked :
- All ribbon cables seem fine and I don't see any obvious damage to the PCB.
- Someone suggested removing the sensors as a faulty sensor could also cause problems. That did not help.
- I tried resetting the controller MacGuyver style with paperclip.
- I tried leaving it connected to a charger for about 2 hours but it didn't show it was charging

The battery is now at 3.4 volt.
I read that the voltage of the battery is 3.7 volt so might it be too low already?
i charged up the battery to 3.7v with another charger but still the controller is blinking orange 3 times.
So it doesn't seem to be the battery.

I'll try to get some new ribbon cables.

Getting ribbon cables turns out harder than I thought with this gen/rev 3 PS5 controller.
China Post will deliver them somewhere next month hopefully.

I tried measuring the 'old' ribbon cables but they seem fine.
I also tried cutting off a millimeter at the bottom as someone suggested on Reddit.

But so far to no avail.
Still 3 blinking orange light when pressing the Ps button.

The search continues...

 

[thesjaakspoiler]

Edit :
Holy handbags, Batman!
Found the issue.

Drunk on my own confidence, there was 1 thing I never bothered to check : checking for shorts between the + and - on the PCB.
It was even mentioned in one of the first posts that I read about the issue.
A visual inspection revealed no problems but just using my multi-meter quickly revealed that there was a short somewhere.
Then it dawned to me that when removing the old sensors, I did bump into 1 tiny capacitor at the time when using some wick to clean things up. I was happy back then that I didn't wipe off that capacitor with the wick but I might have bridged both the legs of this capacitor. My camera could not zoom in enough to see if that was the case.
It sits right next to one of the sensors. Note that another of such a capacitor sits in the bottom right of the other sensor.

It's just a super tiny capacitor but it only sits between the + and - of the sensor to smooth the voltage line.
So it isn't really a problem to remove it, especially with a hall sensor.

To check for a short, just measure continuity between the outer legs of the sensor.

Any sensor will do as they all have their outer legs connecter to the + and -.
The middle pin is always the signal pin for the sensor.
Top view I found on the internet :

After removing that tiny capacitor, my short was gone and the controller worked again.

Other things I learned :
Blinking orange 2 times occurs when there is no battery connected (and you connect the controller into an USB power source). So 2 times blinking orange seems to be battery related errors.

Note that PS4 or XBox hall sensors do not work with the PS5 as they have a different pinout.
PS4 has the + and - swapped on both sensors. Xbox has the + and - swapped for the sensor opposite to the button.
https://preview.redd.it/ps5-ps4-xbo...bp&s=28ba4c370eefbf3297fcc45d05ffe0363163bd7d

I don't think this issue hasn't anything to do with the other connectors or rumbling motors making bad/no contact.
For other hall sensor mods, I did test just the PCB with the newly installed hall sensors with the gamepad tester and that always worked fine as far as I recall.
(https://hardwaretester.com/gamepad)
It also doesn't matter whether the microphones are connected or missing.

Other people reported the following fixes :
- Reset the contoller with a small pin.
- Throwing the controller against the wall. Not sure how that would fix the issue though.
- Press the PS button and one of the left D-pad buttons to force the controller into some update mode while connected to the PS5 or the PC "playstation accesoires" application (https://controller.dl.playstation.net/controller/lang/en/2100004.html)
In case of a pending firmware update, the controller might also refuse to work but for some reason it will not initiate the update by itself.

 

[Modzoo_]

OMG, you are a legend, it works

Post automatically merged: Feb 20, 2025

OMG, you are a legend, it works

 

[mKalkin]

I have same issue, Got fresh sensors and short circuit. Before removing capacitor gona resolder with another and diffirent pair of sensors.

Post automatically merged: Mar 27, 2025

I have same issue, Got fresh sensors and short circuit. Before removing capacitor gona resolder with another and diffirent pair of sensors.

 

[thesjaakspoiler]

You can connect the controller without installing the new sensors and look for the short first.
The short can also be in other components besides those capacitors.
Several times people mentioned using some IPA alcohol or a thermal camera to figure out where the short might be.

 

[mKalkin]

Removed sensors, there was no short circuit. Soldered new (from diffirent seller and diffirent delivery) and all is working prefectly.
Thanks for help.

 

[mpkottawa]

This fixed my issue. It was the bottom right of the other analog sensor. Bridged solder from my botched thumbstick replacement, but cleaning the solder has returned operation to my dualsense controller. Thanks for solving this.

 

[lazie0402]

I had the same issue. Drunk on confidence from the previous repair going too smoothly, I may have gotten a bit careless with the hot air rework gun, and this happened. Any idea what goes there and where I would order the replacement?

 

[thesjaakspoiler]

On EDM-010 boards, that component seems to be near the battery connector :

It is black so I think it is a resistor or maybe a fuse.
Maybe it's just a pull-up/down resistor.

 

[jkyoho]

I had the same issue. Drunk on confidence from the previous repair going too smoothly, I may have gotten a bit careless with the hot air rework gun, and this happened. Any idea what goes there and where I would order the replacement?

https://acidmods.com/forum/index.php/topic,44714.msg340014.html#msg340014
someone in this post reply with the value of 7.5k