Its Quite Toasty
Banned
Has anyone had an issue where with the joycons attached to the device the switch asks you to press l and r to reconnect?
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Joycon connection issue may be hardware related
- Thread starter Its Quite Toasty
- Start date
Yes I had that once. I had to disconnect all controllers and then do a reconnect. It was showing one joycon attached and 1 no attached in handheld mode during a game. So it must have completely lost sync. Sliding it off and back on did not fix it, I had to manually disconnect them both in the software and then L + R got them back.
th3sicknness
Member
Mine are A461 and B011 and have not had any issues yet
th3sicknness
Member
Inside the rail on the joycons at the bottom
Sorry to hear that. I wonder how many other people are just having 'lucky' experiences so far.
casey_contra
Member
I found the motion controls to be delightful.
I won the on-stage competition at the Chicago event and won a hat!
TanookiTom
Member
No, it's a regular LCD TV and a very thin panel. Should this be enough to block the signal/cause major problems with the Joy Con?
The thing is if I explain the situation to Nintendo I am sure they will tell me that I need to put the dock in a different position. Right now I am using it in front of my TV, obstructing the bottom left corner.
Junior Asparagus
Member
Are there any serial numbers attaching the joycons to the system? Was thinking of just picking up a new set at the store to test with, and if they're ok, maybe just returning the original set. But I don't want to like void my warranty or anything if they can eventually see that the new set didn't wasn't the original pair.
RichiRamjag
Member
Haha. That's pretty cool. You excited for release?
No. You need the switch to check I believe. In either case, I did the same with my original grays and no issues since. Wasn't going to send it in or deal with any other bullshit. Just let them know the ones you are returning are faulty.
So the other day I did some unscientific testing.
First I want to say that I fully acknowledge that this was just bad desing that was missed in testing. Putting the antenna in the board was a bad choice.
However I went back and looked at a lot of videos and marketing for the switch and looked at how they were showing controllers being held. In a lot of instances they don't hold the controller fully around the top, near the antenna. Instead the hold it more like a tv remote with the pointer finger on the triggers and rest of the fingers curled down or near the bottom of the joy con.
So you're asking why does this matter?
Well it means less meat covered antenna.
It is very possible that something like this gets through testing because the engineers don't try every single method of holding a device for 100s of hours.
So I did some of my own testing. I slightly adjusted my grip on the left joycon, with just my pointer on the triggers and the remaining fingers curled down. Almost as if I made a pretend gun shape with my hand and then moved my finger slightly out to support the joy con. This left the top of the remote exposed. I played for about 5 hours with no loss of connection.
The same for when they are in the grip. I noticed no or little loss when I kept my fingers down on the grip handle and not ont he back supporting the controller.
I believe this explains why some folks experience little to no issues. It is also ridiculous. It shouldn't have come to this and it is a big oversight by bot having more types of people testing the device. No one should have to adjust their grip, but I found it interesting enough to share. If I get a chance when I get home to take some pictures of what I am talking about I will share.
So I am hopeful the fix is that Nintendo works with local partners like say geeksquad or approved repair places to let folks get a wirse soldered on to the board. Because, again, asking people to all hold a controller in one specifc manner is silly and fails to understand the variety of hands and comfort in the world.
First I want to say that I fully acknowledge that this was just bad desing that was missed in testing. Putting the antenna in the board was a bad choice.
However I went back and looked at a lot of videos and marketing for the switch and looked at how they were showing controllers being held. In a lot of instances they don't hold the controller fully around the top, near the antenna. Instead the hold it more like a tv remote with the pointer finger on the triggers and rest of the fingers curled down or near the bottom of the joy con.
So you're asking why does this matter?
Well it means less meat covered antenna.
It is very possible that something like this gets through testing because the engineers don't try every single method of holding a device for 100s of hours.
So I did some of my own testing. I slightly adjusted my grip on the left joycon, with just my pointer on the triggers and the remaining fingers curled down. Almost as if I made a pretend gun shape with my hand and then moved my finger slightly out to support the joy con. This left the top of the remote exposed. I played for about 5 hours with no loss of connection.
The same for when they are in the grip. I noticed no or little loss when I kept my fingers down on the grip handle and not ont he back supporting the controller.
I believe this explains why some folks experience little to no issues. It is also ridiculous. It shouldn't have come to this and it is a big oversight by bot having more types of people testing the device. No one should have to adjust their grip, but I found it interesting enough to share. If I get a chance when I get home to take some pictures of what I am talking about I will share.
So I am hopeful the fix is that Nintendo works with local partners like say geeksquad or approved repair places to let folks get a wirse soldered on to the board. Because, again, asking people to all hold a controller in one specifc manner is silly and fails to understand the variety of hands and comfort in the world.
Feel the Swift
Member
I've discovered the same thing with grip position. I think we all know at this point all left joy-cons are designed the same and some people are just having lucky experiences/haven't ran into the problem yet.
NYR
Member
th3sicknness
Member
I tested my joycons in my house playing from my dining room facing the wall . in my pocket (grip and no grip) and I ran into no issues with the left.. The right one disconnected once, but as soon as I turned around it reconnected easily. If I had to guess my dining room is roughly 30 feet or so from my living room tv and the switch is directly under the tv inside a large wooden hutch.
I also tried playing from my yard looking thru the window and I had 0 issues with disconnecting.
I palmed both joycons fully and covered the tops in different tests and it wasnt any different.
I guess I must have won the joycon lottery.. Not sure what to take from these tests other than maybe in QC / QA didnt have consistent units to test.
I also tried playing from my yard looking thru the window and I had 0 issues with disconnecting.
I palmed both joycons fully and covered the tops in different tests and it wasnt any different.
I guess I must have won the joycon lottery.. Not sure what to take from these tests other than maybe in QC / QA didnt have consistent units to test.
wild wild rice
Member
This is what I'm hoping for! I'm not a competitive fighting game player, so I'd rather be having fun.
While grip position definitely has an effect on transmission due to antenna design and placement, I don't believe the left joycons are all equal in terms of transmission strength. In my testing of two new, out of the box left joycons in the exact same environment/testing conditions/grip position and switching between the two, one had much stronger signal transmission than the other.
On a technical level...
Looking at the differences in wifi power outputs for USA compared to UK it appears that American Wifi can output A LOT stronger than here in the UK which could cause more interference with other wireless devices no?
https://w.wol.ph/2015/08/28/maximum-wifi-transmission-power-country/
Seems to be backed up by CISCO
http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/wireless/wcs/3-2/configuration/guide/wcscfg32/wcscod.html
Which is why I was wondering whether there were any UK reported joycon issues (or even any confirmed EU as it appears the levels are the same as UK)
And could go some way to explaining some of the issues as Japan has even less tolerance for wifi maximum transmit power
Hopefully this gets resolved soon. I can't play at all on my projector as the switch sits behind a wall in a storage room with all my other electronics being fed to the projector. I only sit about 8-10 feet from the console, but the wall in between means constant sync issues. I have a fair amount of disconnects playing in my living room sitting about 8 feet away with the switch behind a glass door in my TV stand. It'll be really disappointing if I can't hook this up to my projector. Zelda on a massive screen would be incredible.
Ban Puncher
Member
Haven't had any issues with my Joycons desyncing.
Mind you I have not put them up my butt so I cannot be 100% sure.
Mind you I have not put them up my butt so I cannot be 100% sure.
I'd bet at least 4-6 months. For sure by Christmas.
Damn, that's longer than I was hoping. Get it together, Nintendo.
No one knows and no one has a legitimate idea.
Probably not until they do a minor hardware revision
Well, I attempted the wire fix and found something surprising.
I opened the controller up and found the solder point I needed to attach the wire. Since I've never soldered before I was having trouble getting the solder to go where I wanted to. So instead of messing the controller up - I decided to just quit while I was ahead.
I did touch this bead of solder and made it spread a bit further though...
To my surprise, when I put the controller back together and tried it out - it works perfectly now! Even 20-30 feet away behind my back! This is without the extra wire antenna.
So... I think what someone mentioned earlier (I think where I got the picture from) is true. The soldering job is just bad on some of the controllers and - in my case - heating the solder so it would cover a bit more area allowed it to contact better.
In the end... I do not recommend doing this if you're not a pro with a soldering iron. It was pretty stressful.
I opened the controller up and found the solder point I needed to attach the wire. Since I've never soldered before I was having trouble getting the solder to go where I wanted to. So instead of messing the controller up - I decided to just quit while I was ahead.
I did touch this bead of solder and made it spread a bit further though...
To my surprise, when I put the controller back together and tried it out - it works perfectly now! Even 20-30 feet away behind my back! This is without the extra wire antenna.
So... I think what someone mentioned earlier (I think where I got the picture from) is true. The soldering job is just bad on some of the controllers and - in my case - heating the solder so it would cover a bit more area allowed it to contact better.
I did break the clip for one of the ribbon cables... so the LEDs on the rail no longer work - I'm going to try super gluing it back on since the clip is broken. 
In the end... I do not recommend doing this if you're not a pro with a soldering iron. It was pretty stressful.
Mr. Lemming
Member
So I have three sets of Joycons and only am having trouble with one of the three. I'm about 10 feet away on the couch, direct line of sight to the docked console. With my red joycon if I lift my legs to block line of sight it starts to cut out, whereas the other two work fine in the same conditions.
Problem - Red A511
Good - Blue B011
Good - Grey A361
Problem - Red A511
Good - Blue B011
Good - Grey A361
It connects the embedded antenna to the bluetooth chip. I'm not sure why they didn't just directly connect it - maybe because it allows the same board design to be used with an external antenna if needed.
If you take the solder off you can see that there are two little contact pads that each embedded wire connects to. The solder then joins the two pads.
Zaraki_Kenpachi
Member
You're literally taking a Gaffer talking out of his ass as proof of when Nintendo will resolve issues in this thread? Uh.......
Cool, cheers. Like you say strange not to directly connect it. Well this seems like a good theory for the varying performance. Well done on taking the plunge!
If we can replicate it then we might be getting to the bottom of this.
Why not get it replaced by Nintendo under warranty for free?
If I had the issue the it would depend on stock quantities at the store I bought it.
They are currently sold out for example and even if you get a replacement it could be from the same batch (if this is batch related)
People that are getting replacements under warranty from Nintendo seem to be reporting quick turn around and working replacements..
Sniffynose
Member
I saw this on reddit, basically both joycons have terrible BT range/power but the left gets it worse due to the way the antenna gets blocked during use.
https://www.reddit.com/r/NintendoSwitch/comments/5ym0gg/measuring_the_joycon_issues/
Also another electrical engineer comments being unsure of the validity of the "wire fix" (I saw no real difference in my test)
Hopefully they crank up the power in a firmware update, I'd be fine with a 10 hour (vs the supposed 20) if it meant a more stable connection.
https://www.reddit.com/r/NintendoSwitch/comments/5ym0gg/measuring_the_joycon_issues/
Also another electrical engineer comments being unsure of the validity of the "wire fix" (I saw no real difference in my test)
Hopefully they crank up the power in a firmware update, I'd be fine with a 10 hour (vs the supposed 20) if it meant a more stable connection.
NYR
Member
Wow, this is amazing research. Again, shocked it was done by people and not the media.I saw this on reddit, basically both joycons have terrible BT range/power but the left gets it worse due to the way the antenna gets blocked during use.
https://www.reddit.com/r/NintendoSwitch/comments/5ym0gg/measuring_the_joycon_issues/
Also another electrical engineer comments being unsure of the validity of the "wire fix" (I saw no real difference in my test)
Hopefully they crank up the power in a firmware update, I'd be fine with a 10 hour (vs the supposed 20) if it meant a more stable connection.
Well, I attempted the wire fix and found something surprising.
I opened the controller up and found the solder point I needed to attach the wire. Since I've never soldered before I was having trouble getting the solder to go where I wanted to. So instead of messing the controller up - I decided to just quit while I was ahead.
I did touch this bead of solder and made it spread a bit further though...
To my surprise, when I put the controller back together and tried it out - it works perfectly now! Even 20-30 feet away behind my back! This is without the extra wire antenna.
So... I think what someone mentioned earlier (I think where I got the picture from) is true. The soldering job is just bad on some of the controllers and - in my case - heating the solder so it would cover a bit more area allowed it to contact better.
I did break the clip for one of the ribbon cables... so the LEDs on the rail no longer work - I'm going to try super gluing it back on since the clip is broken.
In the end... I do not recommend doing this if you're not a pro with a soldering iron. It was pretty stressful.
Very interesting finding! My joycons seem to not have the issue, but wow, if it's just a matter of a little solder causing it. If that's true, at least it's an easy fix for Nintendo to do at the factory going forward.
Xcell Miguel
Gold Member
My L and R joycons are both G45A and behave the exact same way.
I tested it on the longest range I could in my house and it only has drops at around 14 meters when put behind me.
In my room where there's my PC, screens, router, phone (with BT enabled) I can have drops at 1.5 meter on both joycons, but on a specific spot, and my Xbox One controllers also had drops and even disconnected in that spot.
I tested it on the longest range I could in my house and it only has drops at around 14 meters when put behind me.
In my room where there's my PC, screens, router, phone (with BT enabled) I can have drops at 1.5 meter on both joycons, but on a specific spot, and my Xbox One controllers also had drops and even disconnected in that spot.
I got my Switch a few days ago and unfortunately it seems my left JoyCon was a bad one, as it would cut out annoyingly if, for example, my legs got in the way while I was sitting in my couch a few meters from the console. Since people were talking about antenna issues I decided to take a look at the antenna and see if I could find any issues and fix them. Not by wildly soldering wires to it and seeing what happens, but by actually doing this properly and connecting a 50 Ohm coax to the antenna feed and hooking it up to a VNA:
So the antenna is quite well matched, but that does not mean it radiates well. Let's see what type of efficiency we have:
Not the greatest efficiency ever, for such a small tightly packed device I would say that around -4dB to -3dB seems a good target, but this is hardly terrible. Let's see what happens when we add a hand.
The efficiency drops about 3 to 4dB from the hand, which is probably what you can expect from a small handheld device. The hand does not cause any extraordinary losses though as I have seen some people suggesting due to the antenna placement. This antenna likely works more as a tuning fork for currents in the PCB so aside from the detuning (which we could see previously wasn't that bad) the placement of the antenna is likely not that relevant as most of the losses would be there as long as you grip the PCB.
Regardless, an overall efficiency of -10dB is certainly not going to win any performance awards, but it also does not explain the terrible performance I have been seeing. One thing I did notice however is that at one point when messing around with the JoyCon I pushed down on the top of the PCB (to reduce the gap caused by the cable somewhat) and suddenly the entire resonance disappeared. I unfortunately did not take a screengrab of it, but no matter what I did (let go completely, push down elsewhere, pull it apart etc.) I could not get the resonance to come back until I opened the unit up completely, disconnected everything and then put it back together. Since it happened when I pushed on the top of the JoyCon I folded up some Kapton tape and put it on top of the antenna to keep any flexes and such from coming too close (not that I understand why that would be that bad).
Sorry for the long post, unfortunately I didn't find any clear answer but I fixed my JoyCon at least and maybe someone else out there finds this interesting.
I removed the solder from the antenna trace and underneath it was just two large pads. I am guessing that this was in fact used in combination with the RF test point right before it. In the factory they test the radio performance by probing at the test point but if the antenna is still connected it will mess up the measurement. A lot of the time you simply ignore this and probe with the antenna connected, even with the strange missmatch you can still tell if the radio is working properly or not, but it seems that Nintendo decided to leave a gap and have a worker bridge it by hand afterwards. Regardless, it gives me a nice soldering point for my coax. I also grounded the trace going back to the radio just to make sure I don't get any strange things happening from a floating trace, probably completely unnecessary.
Obviously the JoyCon will not close completely with the semi-rigid cable going out of it, but since I did not feel like damaging the casing by cutting a hole in it I just held it together with tape, the small gap shouldn't make too big a difference. This is the resulting Return Loss (unfortunately I forgot to take a screen grab of the Smith Chart in case you are into that sort of thing):
The resonance covers the 2.4GHz band well and is very deep (anything better than -10dB can be considered more or less flawless here) which means that the antenna is very good at accepting any power sent from the radio. The fact that the resonance is more or less spot on makes me suspect that they did not account for the hand effect when holding the device however...
And as suspected, they did not as the resonance moves down quite a lot once I hold the JoyCon. They are however saved by the fact that the resonance is quite broadband, which means that it still covers the entire very well.
So the antenna is quite well matched, but that does not mean it radiates well. Let's see what type of efficiency we have:
Code:
JoyConL Free-space:
Frequency Antenna Efficiency
2400 MHz -6.4dB
2440 MHz -6.6dB
2480 MHz -5.6dBFor this measurement I cannot measure with my own hand so I had to use a hand phantom. The phantoms are made for holding cell-phones, not JoyCons, so the grip wasn't perfect but it will have to do.
Code:
JoyConL Hand_Phantom
Frequency Antenna Efficiency
2400 MHz -9.9 dB
2440 MHz -10.2 dB
2480 MHz -9.4 dBRegardless, an overall efficiency of -10dB is certainly not going to win any performance awards, but it also does not explain the terrible performance I have been seeing. One thing I did notice however is that at one point when messing around with the JoyCon I pushed down on the top of the PCB (to reduce the gap caused by the cable somewhat) and suddenly the entire resonance disappeared. I unfortunately did not take a screengrab of it, but no matter what I did (let go completely, push down elsewhere, pull it apart etc.) I could not get the resonance to come back until I opened the unit up completely, disconnected everything and then put it back together. Since it happened when I pushed on the top of the JoyCon I folded up some Kapton tape and put it on top of the antenna to keep any flexes and such from coming too close (not that I understand why that would be that bad).
In the end, once I put everything back together the JoyCon works great. I get over 10m of range before it starts jerking up a bit if I put it behind my back. My apartment isn't big enough to check how far I can go when I have line of sight. This type of performance lines up far more with the measurement data too. I don't know if the tape did anything, or if it was bad soldering on the trace that caused anything before but the design clearly works (without doing anything stupid and adding wires to the trace) and it's not an issue of antenna placement or "interference" from the metal nearby. If it is related to the way flexes sit inside the unit or anything else that could change from me pressing on the unit though, it's possible that "good" JoyCons could suddenly become bad and vice versa. The most likely reason might be that soldering though, so it wouldn't surprise me if Nintendo skips the hand soldering on the Antenna trace in the next iteration.
Sorry for the long post, unfortunately I didn't find any clear answer but I fixed my JoyCon at least and maybe someone else out there finds this interesting.
As I mentioned earlier, I was able to fix my desync issues by messing around with the solder. In the process I broke one of the clips that holds the ribbon cable that connects the LEDs and rail buttons to the main board. I tried to fix it back on with some super glue, no such luck. Oh well, for science I guess.
Good news though... Stand-alone pair came in from Amazon and the left joy con works perfectly! The number is A491.
So, as the person with the awesome write up above has also found... I think we can chalk this up to poor soldering since it is done by hand. I guess I just got unlucky 4 times in a row with the ones I tried and maybe the stand-alone pairs have a higher success rate?
I'm just going to send my broken pair back to Amazon as defective and keep the good pair. They'll just send them back to Nintendo anyway. This may be a faster solution then going through Nintendo for you guys.
Edit: I just tested my new pair a bit more and I get desync issues when I stand 20~ feet away with it behind my back. So still not perfect, but still a ton better than my other pair which would fail 6 feet away in normal conditions just sitting on the couch.
Edit 2: Played some Zelda with them detached and now I'm having a bunch of issues with the right joy con when I bring it close to my body.
My conclusion... The first revision of these are total junk and only function reliably when attached. Even when they're working they seem to have input lag that the pro controller doesn't. So... wait for rev2 and use a pro controller until then. What a disappointment.
Good news though... Stand-alone pair came in from Amazon and the left joy con works perfectly! The number is A491.
So, as the person with the awesome write up above has also found... I think we can chalk this up to poor soldering since it is done by hand. I guess I just got unlucky 4 times in a row with the ones I tried and maybe the stand-alone pairs have a higher success rate?
I'm just going to send my broken pair back to Amazon as defective and keep the good pair. They'll just send them back to Nintendo anyway. This may be a faster solution then going through Nintendo for you guys.
Edit: I just tested my new pair a bit more and I get desync issues when I stand 20~ feet away with it behind my back. So still not perfect, but still a ton better than my other pair which would fail 6 feet away in normal conditions just sitting on the couch.
Edit 2: Played some Zelda with them detached and now I'm having a bunch of issues with the right joy con when I bring it close to my body.
My conclusion... The first revision of these are total junk and only function reliably when attached. Even when they're working they seem to have input lag that the pro controller doesn't. So... wait for rev2 and use a pro controller until then. What a disappointment.