A Harmony Remote Control Fix
Not really radio but I thought you'd like to benefit from my experience with this as it perhaps can be applied to other remotes too.
I posses a Logitech Harmony 600 remote control capable of controling a number of TV's, satellite boxes or PVR's. This means instead of having a multitude of separate remotes, one unit covers the lot; in my case 3 units.
Its pretty old now and its a well known fault that with time the buttons stop working. These press a carbon loaded pads fixed to a rubber membrane against printed electrodes on the main PCB. A fix is to separate the remote and clean the electrodes and the pads with IPA. This is a short term fix and the problem occurs again. Not wishing to junk what is a very excellent remote I decided to look for a better solution.
Some have tried taking the pads from other remotes and sticking them onto the rogue ones but I'm not sure how well that works. You can also buy online a fix but I'm not sure how effective this is.
I decided to try sticking small pieces of cooking foil onto the existing pads. (see picture below)
This seemed to work on a trial basis but I found that they quickly became unstuck causing weird functioning of the remote. The problem seemed to be that of finding a glue which would bond to the carbon loaded pad. I tried many types of glue but none seemed to adhere the foil to the pad. I ended up using Pritt which is really a paper to paper glue but seemed to work better than most but not perfectly, as the pads came unstuck after a few weeks of use.
I then found some aluminium foil online with an adhesive back to it.This together with the Pritt seems to do the trick. The mod has been in place now for several months and button pushes on the remote are still very positive.
So a very good remote control has been rescued from the bin and hopefully will serve me well into the future!
I posses a Logitech Harmony 600 remote control capable of controling a number of TV's, satellite boxes or PVR's. This means instead of having a multitude of separate remotes, one unit covers the lot; in my case 3 units.
Its pretty old now and its a well known fault that with time the buttons stop working. These press a carbon loaded pads fixed to a rubber membrane against printed electrodes on the main PCB. A fix is to separate the remote and clean the electrodes and the pads with IPA. This is a short term fix and the problem occurs again. Not wishing to junk what is a very excellent remote I decided to look for a better solution.
Some have tried taking the pads from other remotes and sticking them onto the rogue ones but I'm not sure how well that works. You can also buy online a fix but I'm not sure how effective this is.
I decided to try sticking small pieces of cooking foil onto the existing pads. (see picture below)
This seemed to work on a trial basis but I found that they quickly became unstuck causing weird functioning of the remote. The problem seemed to be that of finding a glue which would bond to the carbon loaded pad. I tried many types of glue but none seemed to adhere the foil to the pad. I ended up using Pritt which is really a paper to paper glue but seemed to work better than most but not perfectly, as the pads came unstuck after a few weeks of use.
I then found some aluminium foil online with an adhesive back to it.This together with the Pritt seems to do the trick. The mod has been in place now for several months and button pushes on the remote are still very positive.
So a very good remote control has been rescued from the bin and hopefully will serve me well into the future!
