Mattstapiece wrote:
I've pinpointed the source of the battery issue for myself. I'm hoping this will either help someone out there, or help Retrobit in updating the firmware to eliminate it. I bought a 2.4ghz Saturn and 2.4gz Genesis controller, both of which would continue to drain their batteries while being in "sleep mode". I would pick the controllers up to use them a day or two after receiving a full charge, and they would only turn on for a moment before powering down.
I've narrowed the issue down to where it only occurs when using either of the controllers on PC. I charged both controllers at the same time, paired one controller to the usb dongle on PC, and paired the other to a genesis dongle on original hardware. The one on PC had completely drained its charge in a 2 day period, while the other continues to hold a charge. There has to be some issue that is preventing the controller from engaging sleep mode while using it on PC.
For the time-being, your best bet would be to unplug the dongle from your PC in order to prevent the charge from being drained, but I couldn't in good conscience recommend these controllers for now. I sent 2 emails to Retrobit and didn't receive a response back either time. This is really disrespectful customer service, and I imagine Sega wouldn't be happy if they knew this is how issues regarding their licensed products are being handled.
This makes sense. I'm just testing my third controller on PC. If it drains in a couple of days then this has to be a firmware issue. I noticed when I first turned it on, it had charge, which implies it was holding charge initially as I'm pretty sure it's been a good while since it left the factory. I mentioned previously that you can see the controller is registered in Windows even when off which also suggests it's still communicating with the dongle while in sleep mode which seems fishy to me.
I also sent several emails to Retrobit with no response. Eventually, after bugging their twitter person, they contacted support to get back in touch with me (who claimed they were having problems with their mail system). I have his direct email if anyone wants to dm me.