Not exactly a keyboard, but it is an input device - and the skills I needed to fix it are ones I picked-up here in the keyboard hobby:
I finally fixed this Xbox Series controller, which hasn’t worked right since the day I got it.
More details and another photo or two
I’ve actually opened this thing up quite a few times trying to find out why the face buttons had weak, chattery input. I replaced the dome pads underneath the buttons, but that didn’t really work. I tried adding some material between the domes and buttons to help them make contact - that helped, but didn’t really work either.
The culprit? Excessive soldering flux from the factory covering the contacts on the PCB.
I’d have never even recognized what it was if not for my experience soldering keyboards - and in fact I didn’t when I first opened this thing like 5 years ago. (Jeez, time flies… I still think of this thing as “new”) - but this time after the buttons were still chattering I took a closer look and saw the flux. A little wiping with an alcohol pad and bam, working like it always should have. Ha, I am so pleased.
During a previous repair attempt, I’d damaged one of the microswitches for the shoulder buttons - so I soldered-in a more fresh one from a donor controller. The 4 pins circled above. A little more challenging than an MX-pattern switch having smaller pins, but same process.
Also earlier on, I removed the LED under the home button, because those things drive me nuts.
These things are pretty difficult to take apart and re-assemble; maybe a notch or two below the complexity of a modern phone, mostly because one of the two PCBs is tethered by a bunch of soldered-on cables which leave very little room to maneuver the other PCB in and out of place. I’m pretty familiar with the process now, though, ha.
While I was at it, I swapped-over the orange-and-green sticks (and face button dome cluster) from my old favorite Xbox One controller (shown above on the right) with an absolutely wrecked USB-micro port. (The whole reason I got a custom Series one in the first place was to replace it with one that has a more sturdy USB-C port, while still retaining similar aesthetics to the limited edition one I had.) I’d planned to swap over the green face buttons, too - but it turns out that while they technically fit, they are a little shorter and not as easy to press that way - so I swapped-back the grey ones.
The donor dome pad cluster doesn’t have the share button on it, so I put some foam rubber from my keyboard supplies under it to keep it in-position - I’ve never used it, so I can’t say I mind that it doesn’t function now. I could have retained its old dome with some creative cutting of the old cluster, but it didn’t seem worth it for a button I don’t use - this is exclusively for PC gaming.
After opening the newer one maybe five times over as many years, it’s finally in proper, snappy working order - and looks almost just like my old favorite - now with a nice, reliable port. I also now have the perfect cable to use with it - such a seemingly subtle change from a stiff USB-micro cable and otherwise similar controller has my setup feeling so much better it’s nuts.
Yay. 