This is a great looking, wireless, full sized, fairly priced controller for the Nintendo Switch. I mean just look at it:
It’s marvelous, innit? Anyhow, I left it unused for a good year, maybe, then I wanted to use it again, and guess what, it didn’t connect. Fair enough, it needs to be charged, right? So I left it on a charger for a couple of hours, still wouldn’t pair. Then left it at it for a couple of days, charged again, still nothing. Hmm, maybe plug it directly into the Switch? Well, it started charging again, indicated by the glowing lights in its body, but still not recognized by the Switch in any shape or form.
Then I started to look around on the web, and stumbled across posts like this, but of course, no solution, only advice to avoid this company like the plague. Gee, that’s not very helpful. Then I went to their website. There’s an app to manage your controllers, yay! But oh never mind, it’s only for Xbox and PC controllers, nay!
I was pretty convinced that all this guy needs is a reset. Too bad it’s battery powered so I can’t really power cycle it, unless I wait a couple of months for it to completely discharge or something. Then again this whole thing started with it not being charged for months, so there’s absolutely no guarantee it’ll work this time.
There’s also no reset button on it. Like, at all. What an oversight. At this point I was like fuck it, I’ll just disassemble it, it won’t get any worse than this. To my surprise, the process is fairly painless, all you have to do is remove the 6 small Phillips screws from its back, then try prying it apart starting from the top and sides – carefully.
Those cubic black extra weights in the side grips may fall off during disassembly, don’t worry, just put them back in their slots and that’s it. Anyhow, see that big piece with the black peel on it in the middle, connected to the board with 3 wires? Bingo, that’s the battery. Pull that connector off the board EXTREMELY CAREFULLY. Don’t pull the wires, only pull the connector sides with pliers, tweezers, or your nails, whatever, just don’t damage the wires. Once disconnected, wait a couple of seconds, then push the connector back into its socket. Now try pairing it with the Switch BEFORE reassembling it – if it fails, give it a few more tries, maybe give it more time while disconnected.
To me it worked on first try, but now it’s time to put it back together, and here comes the tricky part, because as we all know, it’s always harder to put things together than to tear them down. First just gently put the back plate back into its place, making sure you don’t accidentally tear off any component that juts out, or cut into any wires. Once secure, snap it onto the front properly, starting from the bottom up to the top. Finally, start fastening the screws, but don’t make them go all the way in, leave some leeway. Why? Because I found that otherwise the joysticks will randomly get stuck when you push them away from their center position. No, I have no idea why this happens, I guess they snapped this thing together in the factory using a different method or something, the thing is, I tried it twice, and it had the same result, jittery joysticks. So just let go of the warm fuzzy feeling of the screws being completely tightened, trust me, the controller works flawlessly without it.
Anyhow, that’s all there is to it, your controller should be good to go. I guess the PDP manual says you should charge this controller even if left unused for a reason.
Well, I have an even better idea, PDP: HAVE A FRIGGIN’ RESET BUTTON. Cheers.
