WinWing Products and Support feedback

[BammBamm]

Regretfully, I feel it necessary to make the community aware of the most recent experience I had with WinWing as well as 3 other people that have experienced the same issue and their unwillingness to resolve it.

I own over $2100 of WinWing products, the throttles, joysticks, extensions, etc..  I have been happy with them for the most part and had zero issues.

Just recently, the Orion2 joystick base started disconnecting and reconnecting from the USB bus over and over.  I created a ticket and sent images and proof as well as performed all the tasks they asked for the resolution even though I knew them asking me to plug in the base by itself without the joystick attached and play the game that way to see if it happens again would not prove anything, let alone be possible to even do.  How can you fly without the joystick portion?  Anyway, after going back and forth with them and even asking for the tiny little circuit board that cost them less than a dollar to make to be replaced to resolve the issue, all they were willing to do was send me a word document on how to unplug and plug back in the cables.  They informed me it was past the 14 day return period and that was it.  They said sorry for the inconvenience and will not do anything else.  They know they are in another country and cannot be held accountable and unfortunately, their attitude and actions reflect that.

I am now stuck with a $ 300.00 joystick that doesn't work from a company that will not spend any money to resolve the issue.

I sincerely hope nobody else experiences the same issues and this notice helps someone else avoid going through this.

[Dogmanbird]

You're certainly not alone. From my experience it's more of an aliexpress product than something on the level of virpil and vkb. To be grouped with the other two is somewhat a travesty, though I hope this changes eventually.  

I've been following an unofficial discord group over the last couple of years and watched some things unfold which I believe were solved in the end. Posting your issue there might draw some attention and help you get things fixed.

Edit - Sent you a PM

 

Edited March 22, 2023 by Dogmanbird

[Boogie Mitchell]

I’ve been experiencing random disconnects from my Orion2 base as well. I first switched it to its own powered hub, since turning the power off and back on seems to re-activate it. I’m currently trying to leave out the hub altogether and go straight into computer, so we’ll see if that has any effect. Others I’ve read have said this might be a windows usb/ device manager thing, like it’s putting a usb input to sleep. Certainly sounds like that could be something, so I’m looking into that, too. 
 

I’ve got a lot invested in WinWing as well, and have been a big supporter of theirs. But their customer service is really lacking, likely due to the language barrier. Just watch their YouTube product videos and can see this in action. So I’m really hoping they can get this issue solved before too long. It sounds like the firmware update is being worked on as we speak. 

[BammBamm]

Thank you for your feedback.  I agree with you, it's been a great product up until this latest incident.

I have been an IT Engineer for over 30 years now and I've troubleshot this myself.  The biggest tell tale sign that it's the base control board is that it happens after a period of time and then happens over and over.  Typically, this points to an overheating issue or a cold solder. (Cold solder is when there is a crack in the solder circuit somewhere and when it heats up and expands, it creates an air gap causing a temporary disconnect.)  I haven't seen any bad solder joints, it all looks good and the firmware isn't available to download, so without voiding the warranty, I've gone as far as I can go.

Are you experiencing the same disconnect after a period of gameplay time and then it happening several times?

The other thing it could possibly be is a memory leak or buffer overrun.  I have noticed also that when there is a very high load on the joystick I/O it will cause it to happen as well.  Like it can't keep up or there is a bug in the firmware and a disconnect, reconnect kinda flushes it or resets it.

This is all theory though, so who knows.  They claim it's a cable in the base, which I don't see how that's possible.  I've never seen this behavior from a bad cable contact.

[Dogmanbird]

I've had some success reviving boards using a heat gun set on low and waving back and forth across the board. I snip off a thin piece of solder and poke it into one of the holes on a project pcb to hold it in place and sit it next to faulty pcb as an indicator for amount of heat. I stop a few seconds after it melts.

[Apone]

On 3/23/2023 at 3:59 PM, BammBamm said:

I haven't seen any bad solder joints, it all looks good and the firmware isn't available to download, so without voiding the warranty, I've gone as far as I can go.

What warranty though?  Seems they won't do anything so why not try it since it is non-operable anyway?

[BammBamm]

On 3/24/2023 at 5:47 PM, Apone said:

What warranty though?  Seems they won't do anything so why not try it since it is non-operable anyway?

lol, that's a really good point!

[Cgjunk2]

I don’t understand why they told you 14 days.  They have a warranty.  Did you remind them of when you bought it?   They should have access to when you bought it, but it wouldn't hurt to forward your receipt e-mail as a reminder.   Granted, the warranty is just their word of honor, since there is no legal recourse other than local Chines courts.  But, I’m sure that they understand not keeping their word hurts them.  
 

Maybe I’m naive, but Winwing appears to me to be designed by people who are also enthusiasts, and would ultimately care enough to keep their word.  

https://www.winwing.cn/en/terms_of_service?language=en

Of course, the other problem might be the intermittent nature of the problem you are experiencing.  I could imagine the language barriers could preclude a more complete and gentle explanation, leading to a statement that seems dismissive (for efficiency’s sake, saying 14 days might end the discourse).

So if you do have remaining warranty, I’d recommend just doing the troubleshooting steps as stated, and reporting your results. I think that’s just a gating step in their process to ensure the problems aren’t easily solveable. Once support has the info ruling out simple problems, I would imagine they would escalate to more complex possibilities.   Good luck!

Edit:  it doesn’t mean your conclusion is wrong.   I’ve had three axes fail on two different Orion2 throttle bases, and my suspicions were correct that it wasn’t cables or sensors.  But until I could report back the results of their troubleshooting steps, it seems they would not move forward.

Using the base without the stick…could you unplug it and still thread it back on?   I cant imagine, unless you got really lucky, catching a disconnect event on video.   Perhaps, just fly it until it happens with it disconnected, and keep a log to report every event when it does happen.

Edited April 3, 2023 by Cgjunk2

[Dogmanbird]

Hi BammBamm - did you have any success with warranty or repairing it yourself?

[Terminator357]

56 minutes ago, Dogmanbird said:

Hi BammBamm - did you have any success with warranty or repairing it yourself?

Not trying to hijack the OP's thread, but you might want to read this:

 

[_Hoss]

On 3/24/2023 at 5:47 PM, Apone said:

What warranty though?  Seems they won't do anything so why not try it since it is non-operable anyway?

In our shop (Avionics) we have an oven we put CCA'S in to cure epoxies, and a host of other things.... you can set it to 190⁰ and just set the stripped down base in there for an hour or so.

[Phantom_Mark]

Having looked how all my WinWing is put together, if any of them fail it is not a massive job to replace the board with something stand alone as a last resort, even for a hobby level solder'er like me. 

[markom]

My plan for something like that fails on me, unless it's a mechanical failure is to just Arduino it away