PS3 Controller Battery Upgrade

Introduction

I happen to own four PS3 controllers. Two of these are bare SIXAXIS controllers and two are DUALSHOCK controllers. One of them by the way is clearly a fake and it looks quite interesting from inside. Unfortunately all of these have some issues.. One is missing a battery, another has a very very bad battery (a recycled one apparently, less surprisingly it's the fake one). One more has a battery that is slightly less bad and one has R2 or L2 stuck all the time. I don't use my Playstation 3 much but I use these to play (local) Co-op games on the PC so it would be nice to have at least two (and preferably four) functional controllers. After some thought I've decided to replace the batteries with new ones, instead of buying new controllers especially since they're not manufactured anymore. Opening the controllers and replacing the battery is relatively simple, so let's get to it.

I'm not the first one to come up with this, but let's make it clear that I want the new battery to fit inside the controllers, so let's leave out projects such as these (one, two, three). I also recently saw this abomination, but who am I to judge. I definitely don't need such battery capacity, even the original capacity of a new PS3 controller would be enough for me since I suspect that the actual capacity of the current batteries is much less than the nominal capacity. However I'm not going to measure the actual capacity even if it would be interesting to see how much they have degraded. I would like to, but I don't have proper means to do that. :(

Starting point

The original LIP1359 Li-ion battery has an approximate size of 5x36x58 mm, 610 mAh capacity and a 2-pin JST connector with 2 mm pitch (PH series). The first issue is finding a proper battery. I've thought of just ordering a spare from eBay but that's just a gamble. You usually get a decent battery, but it could also have one tenth of the specified capacity.. Second option is to buy from some (possibly shady) local shop. The product will probably be the same cheap fake as above but the price will be much higher. That does not spark joy.

Another option is to buy a generic battery (with a protection chip of course, as is the original) from a reliable source and adapt it for the PS3 controller. After opening some controllers I was quite confident that a 6 mm thick battery could fit inside the controller. However I've decided to go with a battery of the same thickness since I found a suitable one. Theoretically a 6 mm thick battery would fit into the controller, but the tolerances for the battery I found state that the maximum thickness of the battery is 6.5 mm and we definitely don't want to squeeze an unprotected (without a plastic case) lithium battery.

The battery I found is a LP503759 and it has a whopping 1350 mAh capacity, which is a lot compared to the original battery. The battery is also almost the same size as the original one: 5x37x59 mm. Battery of this size might even fit into the original fittings, but they will definitely need a little adjustment. The only issue is that it has a wrong type of connector, more specifically SY instead of a PH (both are JST). To make it nice, I've decided to actually buy a crimping tool and make a proper connector without soldering any wires together or directly onto the board (as is done in many other projects). Moreover the wires of both proper batteries that I have, have been trapped between some plastic parts and the insulation is clearly damaged. This is something that should be taken into account when putting the controllers back together.

The capacity change from 610 mAh to 1350 mAh with almost equally sized batteries sounds suspicious. However the original battery has a plastic case and the actual thickness of the original battery is probably significantly smaller. Unfortunately I didn't have an extra battery to disassemble and measure. Additionally the original battery is a Li-ion and the new one is LiPo. I wasn't actually sure if it's okay to replace a Li-ion with a LiPo but these are even sold as actual replacement batteries. Also other people have replaced the original battery with a LiPo and that seems to work. Originally I wanted to install an even bigger battery but I suppose ~2x the original is enough for me. It's not like I play all the time. In retrospect, I kind of doubt that any bigger battery could be fitted safely inside the controller. Perhaps a 5.5 or 6 mm thick one, but the height of 38 mm is pretty much a hard limit.

Upgrade process

The upgrade process is relatively simple. First the disassembly. Take a Philips screwdriver, unscrew 5 screws at the bottom and wiggle the upper part of the controller until you get the two parts apart from each other. I suggest watching some YouTube video about this, because some controllers seem to be much more difficult to open than the others. There is a very nasty piece of plastic at the bottom of the controller, between the analogue sticks that causes this. The next steps are to disconnect the battery connector from the board and recycle the old battery according to local regulations. Be nice to mother nature. Below is a picture of a SIXAXIS controller with the original battery. The battery happens to be missing a corner since I wanted to see if it's protected or not.

PS3 controller with the original battery

The next step is to prepare the new battery. First the wires should be cut to a correct length. After that the wires should be stripped and crimped, preferably one by one so they don't get shorted accidentally. I've bought an IWS-2820M tool from IWISS for this purpose, but I will definitely have other purposes for it later. Here's a great explanation from bigclive about different crimping tools and how to use them. I've also ordered PHR-2 casings and respective pins (SPH-002). More info about the connectors can be found for example here. Obviously the plastic casing could be recycled from the old batteries as well but I didn't bother with that.

The next step is to remove the original fittings, adjust them with some tool to accept a larger battery and put them back. I used a scraper tool mentioned in this video for the adjustment purposes. A dremel would have been much better but I currently don't have one. The plastic part is quite flimsy so the task is actually quite difficult. After the adjustment the new battery can be installed in place of the old one and the controller can be reassembled. Special care should be taken so that no wires get squeezed between plastic parts. To be safe, I used a string to hold the battery in place, while assembling the controller. I didn't tie the string together, but instead held it tight with my hand while assembling the controller. This way I could pull the string out just before snapping the controller back together, when I knew that the battery is already quite snugly in place.

Unfortunately the adjustment was not that easy. At first had to adjust the fittings to accept a wider battery. Then I realised that the bottom part of the case is actually barely large enough to fit the original battery. Since I didn't want to squeeze the new battery in any dimension, I also had to adjust the bottom part of the case. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of that. Nevertheless, below is a picture of a controller with a new battery ready for assembly. This is a different controller than in the previous picture, but I guess that's okay.

PS3 controller with the new battery

Result

After a quick test, I am very satisfied with the result. The two controllers with new batteries hold the charge without any issues. I use the unofficial windows driver for these controllers and it allows displaying the battery charge with the LEDs on the controllers. Based on these LEDs the new batteries last significantly longer than the old ones. I only replaced two batteries and left two old batteries as is, so it was easy to make a comparison.

Additionally I have the crimping tool and know how to use it. I've concluded that it's actually quite good for crimping JST connectors. However it doesn't feel to be as good for crimping dupont style connectors that I needed in another project. But that's a story for another time.

Final words

I've originally had this idea in October last year and that's when I ordered the crimping tool from AliExpress. It never arrived though, so I got my refund and ordered again from a different seller in January this year. That tool also never arrived, so I got my refund and ordered a new one from Amazon this time. However I was so worried that there's some kind of Bermuda Triangle that is sucking all the IWISS tools inside it, that I ordered another one from Banggood. Eventually the Banggood one arrived first and then the Amazon one, so now I have two of these. That doesn't matter though, because a proper tool would still cost 20x (?) more.

ps. I'm kinda worried about the person who made this video (based on the content). I hope he's still alive. :)

Here's a small bonus. Below is a picture of the fake controller and its battery. The battery was originally insulated with heat srink tube that is usually used for insulating batteries and it was simply glued to the PCB, so there are no fittings of any kind. I've replaced this battery with an original PS3 battery so I had to improvise a bit. It took me so long to write this post that I've actually forgotten how did I solve this. I guess that's good. :)

Clearly fake PS3 controller

Clearly recycled battery of the clearly fake PS3 controller :)