JP1 Remotes

[gianfranco74]

Hi, first of all thank you for welcoming me in this forum. I also take the chance to salute everybody.

Then, I got to know you because of a problem I'm running into with my Dreambox remote (Dreambox V3 URC-39730 B02): intermittently it stops working, i.e. at a certain point, as soon as I press any key, the "selector" button ("Dream" or "TV", depending what I was doing, lights up just about a 1/10 of a second and then "Dream" blinks twice; after few minutes the remote starts working again, without any intervention.
Tried new batteries, re-did all the soldering on the RC boards, reset and re-programmed via JP1 and done all I could be thinking of.... Just to mention, this RC used to work perfectly and started this strange behavior without any external modification/reprogramming, just happened one day to another.
Any idea? Thank you and regards.

[Dreamzapper]

The two blinks makes it look like your remote flips into some programming mode, just a guess.

[johnsfine]

I know of four causes for that problem:

1) The batteries are loose. In some remotes, the battery cover doesn't provide enough support to keep the batteries from moving around. They momentarily break contact as they move. I understand some people glue a piece of compressible foam to the underside of the battery cover to keep the batteries from moving. I haven't tried that yet (though I certainly have the problem with batteries moving).

2) The batteries are bad. But you seem to have checked for that.

3) Using an invalid upgrade protocol, especially with an extender. But I think you would soon figure out which key sequence calls up the problem.

4) The chip in the RCU810 remotes didn't work right with the reset signal in the floating state (that it is in with all JP1 remotes when nothing is connected to the JP1 cable). Some people needed to make a small jumper to fit over the JP1 connector whenever the JP1 cable was not in use. That jumper connected the reset signal to plus voltage inside the remote. You can find it in several old threads about RCU810 problems. Maybe the chip in the dreambox remote has the same flaw.

[gianfranco74]

First of all thans for your help.
Secondly, I think I can exclude option 2 and 3, since 2) I tried at least three different couples of known-to-be-good batteries and 3) the problem appeared when I didn't even know what was a JP1 remote
1 and 4 may be my problem, but at the moment I messed the remote that much that now the problem changed in a way that only the TV controls seem to work, i.e. "Dream" button blinks when I press a key in "dream" mode, but nothing is sent to the decoder.
I restored the original backup of the remote, the eeprom is correctly written and read, but I get no success: I tried to setup a third device (Dreambox has only two buttons, the third "AUX" is shift+TV) but even if I program the eeprom correctly, the remote seems to ignore it during operation and won't even go in "AUX" mode.
Seems to me like the remote went into a "factory" mode and uses pre-defined modes, different from what I get to write in the eeeprom.
I have to say that I made the reset 981 code more than once, I tried a new eeprom (now I put back the original), tried several wrong programming on purpose, but I'm stuck in the above scenario.
Any help is welcome. Regards.

[ggs_de]

I have the same problem with the same remote control.

Is your remote working again? What did you do?

[gianfranco74]

Unfortunately no. I got a new one a while ago.

Ciao.