Episode: 2597
Title: HPR2597: How to Fix a Remote with Buttons that Don't Work
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2597/hpr2597.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 06:20:56

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This is HPR Episode 2597 entitled How to Fix a Remote with Button at Don't Work.
It is hosted by John Culp and is about 7 minutes long and carries a clean flag.
The summary is a response to Ken Fallen episode about how to check whether your remote is working or not.
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Hey, everybody. This is John Culp in Lafayette, Louisiana, and I'm recording another response episode this time to the one by Ken Fallen where he talked about how to test whether your remote is working or not.
I confess I had never heard of that little trick where you hold the remote in front of your phone camera and press the buttons to see whether the light comes on.
But I tried it and it worked. I in fact tried it on one of the remotes in our household that has been giving us some problems.
It's the remote for our DVD player.
When I had been trying to use it, I don't know, for the past many months, it seemed like I could never get any of the buttons to work except maybe a couple.
So I would stand there pushing the one button that worked and then using the selector button didn't work.
So I'd push push push push push and then plus the play button on the device itself to select.
So like combination of remote plus the device to get where we wanted to to watch a DVD and that was kind of a pain.
So anyway, I tried out Ken's little method of testing the remote with the phone and found indeed some of the buttons produced a light and most of them did not.
So having determined that, I did a Google search for remote buttons not working and found a very helpful video by some guy on YouTube.
I'll try to hunt that down and link to it in the show notes.
I guess, but it's maybe not necessary because it's a very simple process, but he had a video on how to make your buttons work again on your remote.
And it's very simple in concept. You take the remote all apart, clean everything and then put it back together.
Now, some remotes are easier to take apart than others.
The one that I was working on wasn't too hard, but it didn't have any screws.
The one this guy was working on in the video had a couple of screws and then it kind of popped apart.
But this one had no screws and so everything was just snapped together with little plastic tabs in the case of the device.
So I used my favorite device for opening up things like this. That is a guitar pick.
Guitar pick is perfect is because pretty strong. I think this is a medium weight one, not a heavy one.
A thin guitar pick might not work as well. The medium thickness is probably what you want.
But it's thin enough to slide down in there between the crack, but stiff enough where you can kind of slide it along.
It'll pop that thing right open.
So I popped it open and pulled out the components.
And I think that's the first time I've ever done that with a remote, or at least recently.
Funny thing, I remember when my son was very, very young, six months old, maybe.
He loved to stick the TV remote in his mouth and just kind of chew on it.
And so I took a remote that we got, I don't know, some like just random remote from Goodwill or something.
And took out the guts of it and like put it in the dishwasher to make it sanitized and then gave him his remote where he could sit there and eat it.
While I was watching TV without actually getting his mouth and his slobber all over the good remote.
But that's the last time I can remember taking a remote apart.
But anyway, one thing I found was that the buttons of a remote are all part of one big piece of silicon.
It's a big floppy thing when you pull it out.
And so you can pull that out and wash it under like warm water or something.
I used a little bit of dish soap and some water to get it nice and clean.
And I did the same thing with the plastic case, just washed it with water.
And then I think one of the remote I took apart, I scrubbed with a dish washing brush also because there was a gun called built up in it.
And so get that stuff nice and clean.
And then the part that probably makes the biggest difference is cleaning the contact points on the circuit board.
And to do that, just get a cotton swab or I don't know, maybe a clean piece of cotton cloth, a rag or something and then dip it in rubbing alcohol.
And then just rub all the contact points on there and get whatever grime has built up off of there.
And I noticed that when I did it on mine, the cotton swab tips became noticeably darker with that dirt and grime.
And then make sure everything's dry.
If you need to, you can use a hair dryer or something to blow on the parts that you washed in water to get all the little bits of water dry and out of there.
I don't think you really want water inside the remote when you put it back together.
So then just put all the pieces back together, snap it together and then try it out.
They recommend you take the batteries out before you do all this as well.
And I'm happy to report that when I put it all back together and tried it out with the DVD player, it worked much better.
Almost all of the buttons worked after doing that and worked much easier.
I didn't have to press repeatedly or stand quite as close to the machine and it's a great improvement.
So I definitely recommend it if you've got a remote that's not behaving right.
Take it apart and clean it and put it back together.
You'll probably find that a lot of repair and maintenance in life is just that.
Taking things apart, cleaning them and putting them back together.
Just listen to my episode on overhauling a bicycle hub and that's essentially the same principle.
Taking out the bearings and cleaning all the old grease out and then repacking with new grease and new bearings, putting them back together.
And voila, it works much, much better after that.
All right, I think that's probably enough.
It's pretty impressive that I've squeezed six minutes out of something as simple as taking it apart, cleaning it and putting it back together.
But that's that. Thank you, Ken, for that excellent pro tip.
And go out and clean a remote. Make your life better. Bye, oh.
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