JP1 Remotes

steve4810 · Joined: 17 Jun 2004 Posts: 4

I've owned 6+ and they have all failed because of inoperative buttons (usually volume... I'm a inveterate volume jockey)

I've gone thru years of disassembly and cleaning, conductive paint (a real pain in my experience) and gluing tiny foil dots onto the button stubs (OK as long as the glue holds... which isn't long in my experience).

So... What's the deal with these things?

I'm down to using 4041s (I'm on my second) because for a low price I still get 4 devices and button mover (something Walmart 4021s don't have BTW).

Are ALL One4Alls just out-an-out worse than the rest of the industry or are ALL BRANDS just designed to fail after 5K presses on a single button?

Steve

Wet In San Diego

zaphod7501 · Joined: 02 Aug 2004 Posts: 534 Location: Peoria Illinois

It's the oil from your fingers that soaks through the rubber and contaminates the contact pads. Isopropyl alchohol can clean the pads but they eventually deteriorate. If you have a supply of dead remotes you can sometimes transplant the carbon disks from one pad to another.

You might be able to seal the rubber using a runners trick. A little film of Shoe-Goo might seal off the rubber and lessen the soak through. The first Sony remotes to use contact pads on rubber sheets put them under plastic buttons and they never failed. It was only after they got rid of the plastic covers that we started to see contacts going bad with extended usage.

Yes , they all do it , some worse than others (thickness and density differences) but your body chemistry is a bigger factor than the rubber itself. Unless , of course , you're always spilling stuff on them.

also Steve
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The Robman · Posted: Mon Jan 10, 2005 10:06 am Post subject:

You could always wear rubber gloves when you use the remote! Smile

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steve4810 · Joined: 17 Jun 2004 Posts: 4

IT's all very depressing.

Body oils?

The Robman · Posted: Thu Jan 13, 2005 1:04 pm Post subject:

The bad news (for you) Steve, is that this is by no means a common occurrance, which makes it quite likely that you are the problem, not the remotes (ie, the body oils thing).

However, there is one remote that I know of where this does seem to happen for alot of people, and that's the ReplayTV "Cat34" remote.
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steve4810 · Joined: 17 Jun 2004 Posts: 4

The reason I questioned the body oil thing is that I have pretty dry skin. Never had sweaty palms or the like.

However if it is oils somehow seeping trough the rubber to degrade the conductive tip, I would think that painting the button tops would prevent this.

Has anyone tried this?

I have painted button tops in the past to aid my wife in knowing which button does what. The paint doesn't stick too well and usually comes off in a month or so. But if a bi-monthly dab of paint would keep the remote going towards >100K presses instead of ~2K, it would be worth it.

Maybe I would even buy another URC8900(I've had 2) and get the JP1 cable knowing the end product might last more than 18 to 24 months.

Even using the my little 4041s, I do quite a lot of keymover work and the times they begin to fail is also about the time I've forgotten the codes and the manuals and notes are buried pretty deep in junk drawers.

Steve
Drying out in San Diego

The Robman · Posted: Thu Jan 13, 2005 3:26 pm Post subject:

One reason that you might want to go the JP1 route anyway is that you can save your programming to your PC and then just re-load it to a new remote. The other day one of my kids got silly putty all over my 15-1994, so I put it aside to clean it, grabbed a spare and loaded the programming into it, so one even noticed the difference.
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steve4810 · Joined: 17 Jun 2004 Posts: 4

OK, what's the cheapest 4 device JP1 remote?

What prices have you seen lately?

The last 4041 cost me ~12 bucks delivered. And the one before that was <10 at "Big Lots".

Steve
Now almost completely dry in San Diego

The Robman · Posted: Thu Jan 13, 2005 7:16 pm Post subject:

There aren't many 4 device JP1 remotes. The cheapest JP1 remote that I sell is the URC-8811 which is $19. I am hoping to get some Millenium 4 remotes at some point which will be cheaper.
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Please don't PM me with remote questions, post them in the forums so all the experts can help!