sluggish remote control

[micky]

Have any of you noticed that your remote control, for a tv or whatever, doesn't work at first, if you haven't used it for a day or two?

I keep thinking the batteries have died, but after a couple minutes it usually works.

I try to warm up the batteries by pressing one button or another 10 or

20 times and that doesn't seem to work but a fwe minutes later, things are fine.

One complication: I'm not controlling the TV directly. I'm shining the remote on PowerMid that uses radio waves to communicate with a receiver in my bedroom that uses a thin cable to send infrared to a little bead that is stuck in front of the IR receiver on the DVDR. But the powermid has a red light that goes on when I'm shining the remote at it, and that does go on. Still, I don't think that is the cause of the delay.

[Jim Joyce]

No.

(other group removed - I don't read there)

[Carlos E.R.]

I have one remote⁽¹⁾ that had buttons that would not work, or I had to press hard, and wiggle them. When I opened the thing, many buttons were humid inside. I never found where that came from, and doesn't happen to any other remote. I cleaned/dried them, close the case, work for a month or two, then repeat.

In the end, I had to glue small pieces of aluminum foil in the inner surface of the buttons so that they would make contact. Problem now is, some of the foil pieces fall down, and the button will not work at all. The tiny foil can also short some other contact instead.

Someone made a program running on the computer that would connect via LAN and emulate the remote, so that's what I use most of the time now. Except for powering it up, that needs the remote.

I have another device that the remote failed yesterday to get a response at some point. I could see a led blinking in the mode it does to tell the user that it is getting a command from the IR remote, yet it did not react. I had to power cycle the device - that button did work. My guess is that the device had hung.

(1) Gigaset M740 AV

[micky]

I have a clock radio in which all the controls are buttons, and 6 sliders. The buttons don't get humidity but dirt. I took the think apart and cleaned them and it was good for about 3 years. The next time I cleaned them it was only good for year. There might have been a 3rd time. Since then I learned about DeOxit and bought some, but haven't had the time to do it again. So all I have is the FM button that turns it on, with some effort, and the volume slider. If there is a power failure long enough to forget the station, it's a real challenge to enter 88.1. which is now the only station I listen to.

I didnt' think of that. And I guess it doesn't work that well! In my case very little space between the two contacts.

When I bought a tv 2 years ago, I bought a second remote right away.

I only have one smart tv. I'm glad I got it but I don't use it much. The others are at least 20 years old.

Glad it's working. I don't think that applies to me.

[Peter]

I had a similar problem recently with a Roku remote. The batteries were good but some corrosion had developed at the end of the spring that made contact with the (-) end of one of the batteries. Cleaned it off with a stiff pencil eraser and problem solved.

[rbowman]

The Pink Pearl solution! Back when cards were inserted into a connector on a backplane the first step in troubleshooting was to pull the card out and apply a Pink Pearl eraser to the contacts.

[Carlos E.R.]

That's what I thought the first time, battery leakage. I cleaned the thing very carefully, assembled it, new batteries, and soon again it had liquid inside the buttons. Actual tiny drops of some liquid. No corrosion. I repeated the process. Nothing worked. Ah, the batteries were dry all the time, and anyway, I changed to rechargeables.

Something in that remote picks humidity from air.

[invalid unparseable]

micky should try Miralax.

[Carlos E.R.]

Nope. None that I could see.

[Clifford Heath]

The buttons are usually molded into a silicone sheet. The silicoen starts to de-polymerise and that's where the liquid comes from - it's silicone oil. You can clean it off with alcohol, but that just gives you enough time to look for a new remote control.

[Carlos E.R.]

Well, that started to happen when the remote was not old, and several years later I'm still using that machine. It is my only device that developed that problem. I have (had, I threw them away this summer) TVs older than that.

No one sells that ancient remote control AFAIK.

[micky]

On ebay I found someone who sells universale remotes that he has programmed for specific devices. They aren't univesal anymore and they don't come with instructions how to make them universal or any other model. I think I found it just by googling the model number, but on ebay where I didn't expect them.

One time I think he wrote me that he was going to stop because he was't making enough money anymore. I said Raise your price. He still would have been cheaper then new old stock. (It occurs to me now that I only know about my particular make and model, and I presume he sold many different models.) I don't know what he decided to do. He had one location in the USA and one in England, I think it was.

[Carlos E.R.]

This particular machine is a very good design, but will be made obsolete soon, if they mandate digital TV to be all in HD (it was scheduled for this year, I think). My device can't do HD. And the aerial reception in this room is bad.

It is a double tuner for terrestrial digital TV. It can use a shared folder in a Linux or Windows computer for storage, or connect to an external, USB2 hard disk. It is capable of making two simultaneous recordings while playing from disk another program. It can be managed via a mini web server, once it is flashed with community software instead of the original one. It is, or was, really good. Except for the remote.

I manage it via network, I almost never use the remote control.

I only mentioned it as an example of devices that work badly with a remote.

[Charlie+]

On Tue, 20 Sep 2022 16:08:09 -0400, micky [e-mail] wrote as underneath :

The Chunghop L336 universal learning remotes work well and are cheap enough. All buttons programmable and remembered even if battery goes flat. BUT - you do have to have a working unit to learn from even if its on its last legs! C+

[Carlos E.R.]

Good to know, thanks.

I wonder, if someone could publish libraries of codes to teach remotes the "language" of some other remote in the library. Would save effort and time.

[Carlos E.R.]

I wonder if that is the degradation process that happens to kitchen utensils, that have parts made in some kind of non slippery rubber. After some years, they degrade and leak something like a glue and have to be thrown to the garbage, unless the rubber part can be removed and the thing still works.

It is not, apparently, what happened to my remote, as the buttons are still, apparently, intact.

[Mark Lloyd]

[snip]

earning remotes work well and are cheap

30 years ago I knew someone with an RCA TV where the remote failed, and a new one cost about $70. RCA (then) did something strange with the volume buttons so you couldn't use a $10 universal remote.

[Marilyn Manson]

My first remote (way over 30 year ago) was one of those clicker kinds with the 2 metal bars inside and the spring loaded "hammer" buttons.

One button rotated the channel knob up one channel with each click. The other one was for the power/volume. Click-On, Click-Low, Click-Medium, Click-High, Click-Off, Click-On, Click-Low, Click-Medium, Click-High, Click-Off, etc. IOW, to lower the volume you had to turn the TV Off and then On.

Since it was frequency base, other items could control the TV. Our vacuum cleaner changed the channels. Rattling Dad's keys would turn the TV On and Off.

[Mark Lloyd]

[snip]

One button for channel was OK when you got only 4 channels. It wasn't so good when I had to use one of those in a hospital that was on a

35-channel cable system. Since "off" was a part of the rotation, you could be watching channel 2 and had to push the button 35 times to turn the TV off.

Nothing electric in the remote. It just used sound.

[Marilyn Manson]

We had at something like 8. National and local channels.

Every cable cable system I ever had used a box of some sort. The TV stayed on one channel, usually 3. The only mechanical channel changer was a slide lever box like this:

I turned mine into a "remote" by extending the wire so that it ran around the perimeter of the room to the end table next to my chair.

My "Off" was part of the volume rotation. 3 volume settings, plus on off.

Who said "electric? I said "2 metal bars inside and the spring loaded "hammer" buttons". I also said "frequency" . Frequency is one of the measurements of sound..