On 10/26/05 09:12 ET, DrJoe said...
The remote takes 4 AA batteries
At least in the US there are some reasonably priced (around $2 a battery) high capacity NiMH rechargable AA batteries available if you shop around. So if you replaced the built-in rechargable pack with loose rechareable AA's you would only occasionally have the inconvenience of recharging (inconvenient because I assume such batteries must be rechared outside the remote). That may be a more practical purchase than a new battery pac or a new remote.
You should also be able to check the battery status
in the setup menu -- push down and hold your finger
on the pronto icon in the top center of your screen.
If the battery is >= 50% it should be OK
I really doubt that the Pronto electronics do a decent job of measuring the battery condition. It is quite a hard thing to measure. Knowing the charge level in a healthy battery is hard enough. Knowing the health of a well charged battery is much harder.
Due to age and/or cold the battery may have unstable voltage during the strong shifts in load caused by trying to send an IR signal. The unstable voltage may then distort the IR signal so the device can't understand it. But under the lower and stable load when not sending IR the same battery may have voltage and other characteristics that look just like those of a healthy battery.
You also may
want to try relearning the codes in question --
if it is a corrupt learn just on the edge of not
working, I wouldn't be too surprised to learn
that it might be unreliable while the electronics
was warming up (the sat receiver would be more
likely than the pronto), and more reliable after
that.
I guess any aspect of the process MIGHT be marginal and any combination of factors MIGHT push you over the edge from working to not working. But I would bet against the two factors mentioned above being relevent. I don't think either a marginal learn or a warm up issue in that sat receiver are involved in this symptom.
