I have an old television, bought it in about '93, or so. I’ll upgrade someday, but for now it works fine. I was having a bit of trouble with the remote control, though. I only use it to turn the set on and off, and the power button was starting to not work very well. I’d have to press it down hard, hold for a few seconds, and even wave the remote back and forth. Seemed like a dirty electrical contact inside, so I took it apart.
Inside was about what I expected. There are a circuit board, and a rubber sheet with the buttons embossed on one side, and metal (I think) disks on the other. When it’s assembled, you press the button and that pushes the metal disk against the circuit board, completing a circuit and the remote beams a signal to the TV. Figured I’d just clean the contacts and put it back together. And even if it doesn’t work, I haven’t really lost anything.
Is that rubber sheet supposed to be sticky? It was like you’d spilled a soda on something and allowed it to dry. Was that some sort of chemical that was applied when it was made, or just a buildup of 17 years worth of finger sweat? I haven’t put it back together yet; I’m wondering if I need to apply some oil or something to help the electrical conductivity.
We’re a diverse group, here, and it is rare to stump the collective wisdom of the SDMB. Does anyone know the 17-year-old trade secrets of electronic remote controls?
The rubber material that they sometimes use just feels sticky. It’s a property of that type of rubber. They didn’t coat it with anything. Clean the contacts, put it back together, and that’s it.
It wasn’t just the rubber part. Something must have rubbed off on the inside of the shell. Parts of that were sticky, too. I’ve cleaned it and let it dry; it’s not sticky at all now.
Maybe the rubber was naturally sticky when it was new, but 17 years of decay let it ooze a bit of sticky residue.
synthetic rubber can deteriorate in that amount of time, that stickiness can be a deterioration product. clean the switch contacts with gentle rubbing.
Decided to give it a go and see what happened. Working much better now.
But while we’re here, is that still how remotes are made; a layer of rubber buttons pressing against a circuit board? I don’t want to take apart a new, working remote to find out.
I’ve made any number of remote controls work again. I take them apart, wash the rubber sheet in hand soap and thoroughly dry it. I wash the case parts as well. I don’t wash the circuit board, though you can if you are absolutely sure that you can remove all the water from beneath the surface mount electronic components. I use a pencil eraser to clean both the contacts on the circuit board and on the pads of the rubber sheet. Just very lightly rub.
In addition to spilled liquids, the synthetic rubber seems to be somewhat permeable to the oils in human fingers - there tends to be a lot of oil sandwiched between the rubber and the circuit board.
My bedroom 19" TV remote, circa 1984, works fine for everything except the on/off switch. So I manually turn it, and set the sleep timer so the TV turns off.
Funny enough, I can only turn my Living Room TV off with the remote. the On/off switch on the TV doesn’t work. It was bought about 4 yrs ago.
I just took my remote apart, cleaned etc. It works better now. Yippee. I remember helping my Mom buy that TV, and she died 25 and half years ago. There was at least 26 yrs of dust in that remote. :eek: It was pretty nasty.
The rubber that presses against the circuit board isn’t just any-old rubber. It’s a special high-conductivity carbon-impregnated rubber. Cleaning, or slightly abrading it (like, with a pencil eraser) can help make a better contact. Cleaning the serpentine pattern on the circuit board with an eraser helps, too.
Not to rain on anyone’s parade, but investing in conductive paste versus spending less than $10US on a universal remote at someplace like Walmart seems like a no-brainer.
Yes, I’ve taken my share of TV remotes apart in my day. They are all pretty much the same. All of the above advice is sound.
Except that universal remotes aren’t really universal. For example, a friend has a dvd-vcr combo and the remote has at least a dozen specialized buttons that you will never find on any universal remote. Most you can get by without, but not all of them. The only real substitute is a learning remote but even then you have to have the original so that it can learn the functions and assign them to keys.
But on a purely personal level, if you use a particular remote long enough, you get used to the way it’s laid out and can easily operate it without looking. So i can understand why people are often reluctant to give up on their old remotes.
Most universal remotes these days, even the $10 cheapies, account for specialized buttons and map them to something else. It may not be all that obvious how it maps, though. For example, on my DVD player I have to press the menu button and then the other buttons change function to access the functions that the original DVD has. While it is in “menu” mode (aka alternate keys mode) the LED on top of the remote blinks. I had to do a bit of trial and error to figure out what the button mapping was, but I can access every function on the DVD player from the universal remote.