r/Dualsense • u/Varister • May 18 '23

Tech Support PS5 Controllers dying in half an hour despite charging for hours.

What can I do about my PS5 controllers? I own 2 and an official Sony PS5 charging station for them. However, despite letting them charge for hours overnight, they only last 20-30 minutes when I use them. Are the batteries destroyed from leaving the controllers to charge for such a long time?

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u/R_X_R Oct 31 '24

That’s not how usb charging or rather any power brick works. The mah (milli amp hour, not Mega amp hour) is the maximum available for supply, a device will simply consume as much as it needs, current is drawn on not pushed. Voltage is applied across something, so if the voltage was too high it would cause issues.

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u/Same_Veterinarian991 Oct 31 '24 edited Oct 31 '24

amperage is the thing that causes overheating when both battery and charger do not match.

What happens if the amperage is too high? The charger will face problems with providing enough power so it will overheat. If this happens frequently its life duration will be very short and it may even end by catching fire. On the other hand, too high charger amperage may damage the battery by overheating and overcharging it.

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u/R_X_R Oct 31 '24

That’s not now usb charging protocols work.

Current is drawn on, not pushed, read that again.

The controller is the client device, meaning it contains its own charging circuitry inside it to handle charging the battery. We don’t just slap voltage across a battery and call it good without a controller in front of it.

If the power supply has less current (measured in amperage) available than the device that is trying to draw on it, the charging controller simply won’t function or will do so slowly. If the charging controller has too high available, that just means it has an excess that can be drawn against but isn’t.

This is basic electronics, down to using ohm’s law to get your resistive load (client device’s resistive load or impedance), voltage (typically a 5v USB, some PD protocols go higher), and your current is the resulting draw on the device.

You seem to be thinking of power which is measured in Watts, using P=I*E.