Reinserting Batteries Brings Life to Remote - Why?

[bostonman]

I'm buying new batteries today and will try measuring the current draw.

This is ridiculous that I've gone through three sets of batteries in about six-months and I almost never use the remote until recently when I began watching stuff on a thumb drive plugged into the TV - so I need the remote to navigate the TV menus.

[SeanB]

Sometimes the remote has ceramic capacitors in it that are leaky, either from damage during manufacture, or just from handling. So if you can actually open the remote look on the supply rails, and replace any small ceramic capacitors across the supply rails, pretty much with almost any ceramic capacitor, though I have used 10uf 10V tantalum capacitors borrowed off some other board to replace them very often. Solder the LED connections, soldered in components and battery connectors if they are solder in, and clean the top of the board, where the carbon contacts are ,with IPA, along with the silicone rubber membrane with the rubber bumps, so that there is no leakage. This often fixes a lot of issues, and clean battery contacts and battery ends with IPA as well, and a thin smear of oil on the contacts to keep them corroding as much.

Generally helps a lot, and often the problem is just the actual controller itself, being made cheaply, and attached to a porous SRBP board as a COB, drawing excess current from internal leakage.

[james_s]

The same goes for phones. My old Nokia 3310 could be in standby for over two weeks. My latest greatest fruitphone barely goes a day. What they hell are they doing ? The screen is off, only the GSM radio needs to run ( just like the nokia. The radio runs in receive, listening for incoming call or SMS.). if my phone is idle. and it can be done on moderns smartphones. the Nokia 2 (HMD design) has 56 day standby time !

Your modern smartphone is doing a lot more than that, it's a fullblown computer and it is active and communicating all the time. That's how all manner of other apps can notify you, for example I have Slack I use for work, and my security cameras, and my home automation, and a few other apps can notify me. You may only use yours for phone calls and SMS, but most people run a far broader range of apps and the phone is designed around that ability.

[bostonman]

I checked the current draw with brand new batteries (keep in mind this TV/remove is only approximately six-months-old making it hard to believe it's broken).

Immediately when I connect the meter, I see about 9 - 10mA for about a second or two. Afterwards it seems to vary between 1.8mA and 2.1mA (I'm calling it 2mA).

Looking at the Duracell datasheet for AAA batteries, at 5mA (which is the lowest the graph goes), I see about 260 'service hours' before the voltage drops to 0.9v. To make the math easier, I'm rounding up to 2.5mA, so I'm doubling the time for 5mA since the remote is drawing "half" the current, and calculating 22-days before the batteries drop to 0.9v.

This matches quite closely with how long the batteries are actually lasting.

This is horrible. Assuming the remote isn't broken, what company in their right mind would make a remote that kills batteries monthly? I thought the goal was to decrease emissions? At new batteries monthly, that means twenty-four batteries per year are being wasted.

Meanwhile Toshiba gets a pat on the back from the government for making a energy efficient TV, but the shell game being played is to use valuable resources to make batteries.

[rsjsouza]

To be honest, I would disassemble the remote and thoroughly wash it with IPA and check any capacitors as suggested by SeanB above. That current consumption is far from "leakage" - it is a whole open faucet!

[Psi]

I remember they days of AA's in walkmans.
Once your AA's were almost empty and the walkman started to sound a bit slow, you would remove the cells and bite the metal casing with your teeth to put lots of dents all over them. Then put them back in and you'd get 15-30min more runtime.

Something about crushing the cell (maybe more internal pressure) improved it's current/capacity delivery and allowed you to squeeze more runtime out of an empty cell.

[Someone]

To be honest, I would disassemble the remote and thoroughly wash it with IPA and check any capacitors as suggested by SeanB above. That current consumption is far from "leakage" - it is a whole open faucet!

Thats actually a pretty typical current consumption for a cheap RF remote! Be careful when buying a modern appliance.

[Someone]

I remember they days of AA's in walkmans.
Once your AA's were almost empty and the walkman started to sound a bit slow, you would remove the cells and bite the metal casing with your teeth to put lots of dents all over them. Then put them back in and you'd get 15-30min more runtime.

Something about crushing the cell (maybe more internal pressure) improved it's current/capacity delivery and allowed you to squeeze more runtime out of an empty cell.

Or heating them, soaking them on some waste heat seemed to bring back that extra %

[rsjsouza]

To be honest, I would disassemble the remote and thoroughly wash it with IPA and check any capacitors as suggested by SeanB above. That current consumption is far from "leakage" - it is a whole open faucet!

Thats actually a pretty typical current consumption for a cheap RF remote! Be careful when buying a modern appliance.

Standby power in this order of magnitude is quite high, unless the remote has some sort of spy service (Alexa, Nest, etc.). For an IR (typical of TV sets), this is massive.

[bostonman]

Standby power in this order of magnitude is quite high, unless the remote has some sort of spy service (Alexa, Nest, etc.). For an IR (typical of TV sets), this is massive.

I've never designed anything with batteries that couldn't be turned off, and most of my experience is with AC/DC, so initially I thought 2mA was quite low until I looked at the datasheet.

Thats actually a pretty typical current consumption for a cheap RF remote! Be careful when buying a modern appliance.

I think the agreed answer is that this is too high. The datasheet shows at 2mA, I'd be replacing the batteries monthly, so it can't be a typical current load.

I'm wondering if someone pushed a button or a series of buttons at one point and activated some feature where it keeps the remote in constant alert thus drawing the high current. Looking online, I've seen people do a "factory reset" which I may try (I think one video showed the guy remove the batteries, hold down power for ten-seconds, push every button on the remote, and reinsert the batteries - no idea why this solves issues since the batteries are not installed).

The other options are sending an email to the company and disassembling it as suggested.

[Someone]

To be honest, I would disassemble the remote and thoroughly wash it with IPA and check any capacitors as suggested by SeanB above. That current consumption is far from "leakage" - it is a whole open faucet!

Thats actually a pretty typical current consumption for a cheap RF remote! Be careful when buying a modern appliance.

Standby power in this order of magnitude is quite high, unless the remote has some sort of spy service (Alexa, Nest, etc.). For an IR (typical of TV sets), this is massive.

Except the OP has conveniently managed to avoid telling us the model or showing a picture. So we don't know the communication method either way. I specifically said, typical for cheap/crappy RF. Others have had similarly bad experience:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/roku-needs-recall/

[bostonman]

Except the OP has conveniently managed to avoid telling us the model or showing a picture.

I did post the TV model.

If it matters, it’s a Toshiba model: 43LF621U21

[Someone]

Except the OP has conveniently managed to avoid telling us the model or showing a picture.

I did post the TV model.

If it matters, it’s a Toshiba model: 43LF621U21

But you have a problem with the remote....    trying to wade through the marketing/sales crap associated with the TV model to find details about the remote associated with it

[bostonman]

Does a picture from the manual help or is more information needed?

[free_electron]

Does a picture from the manual help or is more information needed?

yup. that's the fucker that eats batteries like crazy ! same remote here.

[free_electron]

Your modern smartphone is doing a lot more than that, it's a fullblown computer and it is active and communicating all the time. That's how all manner of other apps can notify you, for example I have Slack I use for work, and my security cameras, and my home automation, and a few other apps can notify me. You may only use yours for phone calls and SMS, but most people run a far broader range of apps and the phone is designed around that ability.

if the screen is off it shouldn't do didly squat. i got all that notification crap turned off. no pings, ploings, dingelings or other disturbances. All that needs to run is the GSM radio listening for an incoming call or SMS , just like the Nokia did.
Smartphones should have an ability to turn all that crap that keeps running off. screen off means everything sleep. i am not actively using the phone so it doesn't need to do anything. if i open the email app it is ok to fetch the stuff then and there. i don't want all that "push" stuff.

my phone is there so i can bug other people if i need to, not for other people to bug me.

[bostonman]

yup. that's the fucker that eats batteries like crazy ! same remote here.

This is crazy. How could they design something that eats batteries monthly?

[Someone]

yup. that's the fucker that eats batteries like crazy ! same remote here.

This is crazy. How could they design something that eats batteries monthly?

Because that's your cost to bear, not theirs. So they don't care (externalized costs). Features sell in consumer space, few consider the lifetime cost/consequences.

[bostonman]

Maybe I can buy a 3rd party remote to control the menu.

Basically all I need is to select the USB port and navigate. The other buttons are useless to me as the cable remote handles power and volume.

[BrokenYugo]

yup. that's the fucker that eats batteries like crazy ! same remote here.

This is crazy. How could they design something that eats batteries monthly?

Probably by not paying enough to the people who designed it.

[rsjsouza]

yup. that's the fucker that eats batteries like crazy ! same remote here.

This is crazy. How could they design something that eats batteries monthly?

Probably by not paying enough to the people who designed it.

Or asking for insanely tight schedules.

[AndyC_772]

Or, just maybe, it's faulty...?

It looks very similar indeed to an Amazon Fire TV remote - unquestionably designed by the same team. It uses Bluetooth, has complex firmware, and the batteries certainly should last well. Mine do.

I vaguely recall testing the power consumption of mine, when I first got one with a built in microphone. I was curious to see if it was physically capable of listening and doing anything meaningful with audio prior to the Alexa button being pressed, and pleased to see that it's not - based on the amount of power it draws before and after pressing said button.

Of course, firmware can always activate the mic and go into full power mode, either by design, or as a result of malicious code (including malicious code intentionally installed by the device manufacturer). So I opened it up and desoldered the mic, just to be sure. The tip is to pry off the 4-way D-pad first, there's a couple of screws under there which need to be removed. The rest is just clipped together, not too difficult to get apart once you know how.