Defective Right Nub

[FaeMinx]

The only real opportunity I've had to actually test the nubs has been by playing Super Geometry Dust.


I noticed I wasn't able to aim directly down???


So I put the nubs into joystick mode and examined the Pandora Input Tester.


Left nub gives a full range of motion in every direction and moves about smoothly.


Right nub is jerky (jumps from 0 to 30/32 as soon as you push up, left, or right) and the first time I tried it only registered about 50% range 15/17 when pushing down. After resetting the nub I was only able to register about 5/7 when pushing down.


Sometimes it doesn't register down at all.


The right nub also doesn't feel as secure and smooth as the left. It seemed slightly scratchy, but I was hoping that was in my mind.


Suggestions anyone?

 

[EvilDragon]

Yes. First, try to push the case around the nub as downwards as possible.


It might be the nub disc hits the case, in that case, exactly that would happen.


Second, after doing that, use the input tester and move the nub into all possible directions for a while.


Normally after a few seconds it suddenly works as it should.


Do you have a new or old nub?

 

[FaeMinx]

I tried what you suggested, but it made no noticeable difference. I wiggle it for ages in the input tester and can only make half circles.

 

[Lafazar]

Try rebooting your Pandora. I have the old nubs and I noticed that sometimes they can calibrate themselves incorrectly and one direction can feel like dead. Rebooting fixes that particular problem for me.

 

[FaeMinx]

I'll try rebooting thanks.


Forgot to say: Mine is a premium, so have no idea: new I suppose? (nubs)

 

[ChaosWarmech]

I got this yesterday moving to the right. It wouldn't register at all, but after a couple reboots it fixed and hasn't come back since.


I've said it before, and I'll say it again: We need better software for nub calibration!!

 

[Lafazar]

If I understand this correctly the Problem is that the nub calibration software is a firmware inside the nubs and cannot be accessed from the linux kernel. Or is there a way to trigger a recalibration of the nubs without rebooting? I always thought the reason why rebooting helps is because the nubs are momentarily without power and lose the calibration info from their memory.

 

[FaeMinx]

Well, after first reboot - not touching the nubs on boot up the problem was worse.


Second reboot I did the nub dance - problem was slightly better.


Then, I popped out the battery for 20 seconds. Didn't touch the nubs on boot up and the problem seems fixed. Restarted the Pandora and the nubs are still fine.


I have to say though, that even though the Pandora Input Tester is registering a full range of motion for the right nub - it still isn't as smooth as the left nub.


I changed the mouse button sensitivity for the right nub from 20 to 30. It didn't make it smoother in the input tester, but yes: now it's only registering about 16/19 when I press down.


Time to pop the battery out again...


Problem fixed.


But now the left nub isn't as smooth as the right! :blink: Correction: after a few seconds the left nub became smooth again.


So at present the solution is to remove the battery for a short while.


Is this software related - or a hardware fault that the software is trying to compensate for (I.e it's always the down direction on the right nub that goes out)? :unsure:

 

[Lafazar]

Hard to say.


This MIGHT be a bug in the nub firmware, but I saw very few reports of this happening on these boards which would speak against this possibility. Everyone would have noticed this happening from time to time if it really was a firmware bug.


Perhaps there is some kind of electronic tolerance issue that makes it trigger only for certain nubs or boards (Similar to the WiFi speed issue that was caused by a wrong impedance on the Pandora board).


I'm really happy with my nubs. Apart from one direction going dead from time to time (it's really rare, happened three times in total so far) they work really well, so I'm not going to replace them.