Debouncing Fails on My Remotes periodically!

you gave the reason yourself " I press them harder"

I think it can be summed up in two words: Dirty contacts.

Open the remote and carefully clean everything. That should end the problem.

William Sommerwerck:

The weird thing is that this happens to both remotes at the same exact times and days of the year. In another hour, they will both be fine, and the episode won't repeat for another two weeks to a month.

Assuming you're reporting this honestly, I can only guess that the problem is caused by interference from window or room illumination.

It could be a temperature/condensation effect, perhaps. If an electronic device is left in a cold room, and then exposed to warmer and moister air, moisture can condense on the internal electronics and create low-level current leaks which can cause a malfunction. Sensitive scientific instruments "brought in from the cold" sometimes need to be kept in a sealed container until they warm up to room temperature, for this reason. Years ago I had a "haunted" Macintosh II which would power itself up in the morning for no obvious reason... condensation hitting the "power on" contacts in the keyboard were responsible.

The other possibility is that you have some device in the room which is emitting enough pulsed IR to "jam" the IR remote sensor in the television... it might not see a key-press, or might see a key-press and then not the key-release signal (and so would "run away" with the volume going all the way up or down).

Compact fluorescent lights, or other fluorescent lights with electronic ballasts, are notorious for causing IR-remote problems. They "flicker" at a rate of 40 kHz or so, and can saturate the IR sensor in a television. It's possible that you have one of these whose pulse rate occasionally drifts into the TV's IR passband and blocks signals from your remote.

If you're using one of those horrid X-10 "IR over RF" repeaters (the black pyramid type)... these, too, are very subject to jamming problems. Even having one of the receivers in the same room as your TV can cause problems - if it picks up random RF signals it can transmit them as IR and confuse the TV.

William Sommerwerck wrote "- show quoted text - Assuming you're reporting this honestly, I can only guess that the problem is caused by interference from window or room illumination. "

I'm not here to jerk anyone's chain. Got enough people in DC doing that to us right now. ;)

Thing to remember here is that with many IR remote systems, a command like volume has a code, a pulse train of course. However once the micro in the T V or whatever gets the code, ANY continued IR recieved will continue the op eration. The remote does not repeat the pulse train, it just puts out burst s of IR at so many millisecond intervals.

This means that the TV might pick up just any stray IR and think you are st ill pressing the button.

Not all systems are like that but since it seems like it would be cheaper t o implement, it's likely designed that way.

Sometimes you can test that theory by taking the right remote and a complet ely unrelated remote and hitting vol+ for example on the right remote and t hen hold down any key on the other remote. If the volume keeps going up, th at's what you got.

In that case look for other sources of IR in the room, even sunlight reflec ting off something, or in some kinda rare cases CCFL lighting. I know CCFLs are not supposed to put out IR but supposed to is a relative term. There w as a thread on that not long ago but in that case apparently the CCFL inter fered with the IR. While the IR output may be quite low, the reciever might be sensitive enough to take what it's got and misinterpret it.

You can listen to your remote on an am radio.

UPDATE:

CFL bulbs on or off have no effect on all remotes debounce fail at once.

Living room is also away from sunniest portion of house.

Try a new set of dry cells.

dave:

I've changed the batteries in all these remotes frequently enough to keep Duracell permanently in the black. LOL! Problem still persists.

Duracell may be your problem. They are very iffy.

Then the only answer is the remote reciever.

Since the behavior is reproducible with two completely different remote control units from different manufacturers, the problem is probably not with the remotes.

Perhaps there is some source of infra-red pulses in your environment. Is there another IR system in use in the room, like an IR based wireless mouse?

Failing an environmental cause, the next thing to suspect would be the TV itself getting into some faulty state state in which it briefly fails to respond.

Specifically, suppose that the embedded system goes briefly unresponsive, but continues to handle interrupts from its IR stack and queue up the commands in its buffers.

When you're holding down your remote's keys, you're sending multiple volume-up commands. These look like they are being ignored but they are actually buffered. When the TV's embedded system comes out of its "guru meditation", it processes all of those commands, resulting in the volume going all the way up.

The solution for you is to relax. When the TV does not respond, back off. Do not press the keys harder, and do not hold them down; trust me, these controllers are not pressure or velocity sensitive. Just let go of the volume key, wait a second or two, and give it just a single tap. If that doesn't work, wait a little longer and try again.

Start unplugging ALL electric/electronic devices in your home, eventually y ou should find a solution. This includes all lights, ANYTHING that runs on electyricity. It could be almost anything that plugs into an outlet or run s on batteries. If you know an electromagnetic compatibility engineer (EMC engineer), they might be able to use a spectrum analyzer to find a noise so urce. But there are only a few thousand of us in the USA so chances are yo u are on your own to find this problem. The fact that two separate systems fail simultaneously pretty much says it is not the remotes themselves, but something getting into the receivers.

Jan snipped-for-privacy@sbcglobal.net wrote: "Start unplugging ALL electric/electronic devices in your home, eventually you should find a solution. This includes all lights, ANYTHING that runs o n electyricity. It could be almost anything that plugs into an outlet or ru ns on batteries. If you know an electromagnetic compatibility engineer (EMC engineer), they might be able to use a spectrum analyzer to find a noise s ource. But there are only a few thousand of us in the USA so chances are y ou are on your own to find this problem. The fact that two separate system s fail simultaneously pretty much says it is not the remotes themselves, bu t something getting into the receivers. "

Thanks for this draconian suggestion! Lol.

See, this problem happens at random, and might recur two weeks apart, or, t wo months apart. Relatively infrequently.

The remotes involved are for my 32" Sanyo flat tube TV, and my JVC VHS/DVD combo deck. Both are ten years old but are in fine shape and work flawlessl y(aside from this weird remote problem).

The JVC combo remote can also be programmed for basic on/off, channel, and volume of a television. It is thusly programmed to control those functions of the Sanyo.

The typical scenario: I pick up the Sanyo TV remote to adjust the volume, press volume up or down, and nothing happens. I press harder, and the volu me just races away - up or or down. I then must run over to the TV and pre ss the volume buttons to stop it.

Ditto the volume buttons on the JVC remote. And they both behave this way at the SAME time. The episode typically lasts minutes, and in a half-hour both remotes' volumes operate normally. And it may not happen again for another week or even months.

Assuming its a neighbour with remote controlled house lighting or something like that , coding on the mains getting to the room lights. Try temporary spots sloppy-gluing a tube shroud over the sensor of the units and direct the axis(by cutting an angle to the glue face) of the shroud to where you usually use the remote (assuming not in line with a room light of course)

I say it's the remote recieve in the TV. It's getting noisy. If it isn't that it's the microprocessor.

Kaz Kylheku wrote: "When you're holding down your remote's keys, you're sending multiple volume-up "

I must apologize for not being clear by "pressing harder". What I meant was I press the button with more FORCE, not for a longer duration.

Pressing the volume up/down once(the equivalent of a keystroke on a keybd) should adjust the volume by one value up or down.

I keep pressing it until my finger bone feels like it will either break or go through the back of the remote - THEN the volume races away like an NHRA hotrod - all the way up or down.

When I attempt to adjust the volume on the other remote, this phenomenon repeats.