wobbly iAudio X5 joystick

[sixthofmay]

Ok so they're all wobbly, and have been like that even when my X5s were brand new. No precision feel whatsoever.

I took apart 2 of my "parts" X5s and most of the wobble is in the switch itself.

The wiki is not correct with saying it's out of production. The manufacturer names have changed but it's still being made and the TPA511GLFS version is available from Digikey, and I just ordered some to play with. The TPA511G mentioned in the wiki is available too on special order from Newark and Mouser, though the minimum order quantity will make you faint... The difference between the two parts appears to be that the contact material on the older version was not certified lead-free, even though the switch does have a lead-free certification.

I'm hoping they tightened up the feel on the new ones, but if not I'm prepared to try to do some microsurgery on the internals to see if anything can be done to firm up the workings.

But if that effort fails, has anyone found an equivalent function switch and about the same size but of higher quality? Exact same contact arrangement isn't too important as I can probably fashion an adapter PCB from some thin PCB stock.

Me no like wobblies... 


Edit:
I took one apart. The two rectangular plastic welds broke off pretty easily with a tiny flat jewelers screwdriver. The round weld I was able to shave off with a #11 xacto blade. Then I unsoldered the 3 pads that go to the top switches and pried the top off carefully. And the verdict is that it's crap.

There are two cantilevers orthogonal to each other, and some thin-walled kapton shrink tubing around those could firm up any play there. I could also shave off a few thousands from the top frame's internal contact areas, but the big issue is the damn shaft which is also a plunger for the select button. It plunges through a D hole in a gimal that supports the cantilevers. The D hole and shaft also have a V groove on the opposite side of the D flat. And the issue is that the plunger is a few thousands all around too small which would moot any efforts to tighten up the other areas.

Basically I need to add a few thousands of some hard low friction and low stiction material to the shaft to just the region going through the gimbal (or instead add material inside the gimbal's hole). And good luck with that because both the gimbal and shaft are made of a hard low friction plastic, which I don't think anything would stick to... About the only solution I see would be fabrication of a new slightly larger shaft. Which is outside my realm of expertise...

I'm going to do some googling and see if there are any other potential joysticks available.

Edit2:
They call them tactile navigation switches.
5 position with center push is the style we want.
To fit in the X5:
About 2mm height for the body and about 9x9mm max outer dimensions. And 5mm for the shaft height.
The available stock shafts are all square and direction movement 45 degrees off from the IIT Cannon/CK switch, but I can probably make it fit (and fit the X5 knobby) with some various mods.
Some of the Alps switches have guide bosses. I'm guessing the bosses reduce wobble. I'll order both with and without.

I'm going to order some of these to test:
Mouser has all these:
688-SKRHAB mouser
SKRHABE010

688-SKRHAC mouser
SKRHACE010

688-SKRHAD mouser
SKRHADE010

688-SKQUDB mouser
SKQUDBE010

And one from e-switch.com. I haven't located a stocking dist. yet:
JS1400.pdf

Lots of other hits to look at from my google search...

Edit3, 4-2-2010
I didn't have time this past week to do any more joystick switch research, but the TPA511GLFS from Digikey arrived, and I can happily report that it is massively better quality than the original joystick switch. Very little slop in the action.

Now I just need to get the courage to carefully take apart an otherwise good X5, carefully unsolder the old switch without stressing the pads or nearby components, clean up the excess solder from the pads with rosin and solder wick, and solder in the new.

I'm going to practice on my "parts" X5s first.

To properly accomplish the removal, I'll need a sharp taper chisel tip 8mm wide and with rounded nose at about 0.25mm radius. My soldering station is from 1990, a cheapy generic I got from Jameco, and no parts available anymore, nor did they ever have a tip like that.

So... probably going to have to get a Weller, which I'm sure there's every imaginable size and shape tip available.

Edit4, 4-2-2010 3 hours later..
Weller has the NTSMT01 10mm wide tip and specifically made for this purpose.

But to get the complete outfit, station power supply, pencil, stand, and tip + shipping is like $400... I checked eBay for some older models and it's a bit cheaper but still too much as I already blew the next couple months budget on that 256GB Photofast SSD...

Plan B:
For my old soldering station, a long time ago I modified one of the tips to hold an #11 x-acto blade for plastic hot cutting purposes. Already has a slot and a hole for a 2-56 thread mounting screw. And I have a roll of 0.025 copper sheet (for the 3 phase 200KW brushless DC motor control project for the electric car conversion project (that hasn't really started yet..)). Hmmm..

After an hour I managed to make exactly what I needed and the first practice went well.
Pics and details to follow...

[Chronon]

You have posted some very valuable information here.  I encourage you to document your work on the wiki, as it will stay organized and not get lost in the forums.  You could link to the relevant Iaudio port pages.

[sixthofmay]

Yeah adding the new switch info to the wiki is a good idea, though I'm not sure the wiki was intended to have info like changing the joystick. Or maybe it is intended for that? I don't know. I'll have to look around what's already there, and ask on IRC when I go there to ask for the wiki edit permissions.

Anyway.. a quick update.. I spent all weekend on the joystick upgrade... I can tell you it is not for the casual upgrader. Besides needing to know how to do SMT soldering decently and compensate the heat as needed (and other tricks), I had to build a special tool to safely extract the mainboard, plus there are critical gotchas about the headphone board I already knew about from my parts X5s.

In the end I was successful and observed some angular quirks in the switch rest position, new and old switches both have it, and the quirks so far from my two days of testing are *beneficial* strangely enough. That probably makes no sense... hehe.. you'll understand later...

So I've been working on a step-by-step process and have about 200 pictures to go through, pick and crop the best ones, and edit it all to something reasonable in length... and hopefully by the end of next weekend I'll have it done and posted here.

[Chronon]

Information on repairing/replacing components that are subject to failure is certainly fair game (as is information about miscellaneous hardware hacks).  Somebody created a page showing Sansa users how to replace or repair a common failure suffered by the headphone jack.