Hey folks,

Thanks for the excellent forum here. It's amazing.

I've had an IR543 for about a year now, using it with my Pronto. Recently, about a month or two ago, the IR543 stopped receiving commands from the Pronto very well. When I walk to within about 3 feet of the IR543, commands come in fine and clear. However, when sitting back on my couch, where I used to be able to send commands without the Pronto even pointing at the IR543, I now must continually push buttons on the pronto until the IR543 "wakes up" and lights up with a command. The weird thing is, after it wakes up, it works fine for about 10 seconds, and receives commands very clearly from this distance. If I stop sending it commands though, the next time I go to control the lights, I gotta send signals for about 30 seconds more before it sees anything again.

Ideas or thoughts? Is something wrong with my IR543? If it was impossible to get through at that distance I'd attribute interference, but the fact that after trying to send for a bit it DOES get through, I'm thinking it must be something else.

I have tried 2 different prontos by the way, just to make sure it wasn't the remote, and I've also tried fresh batteries. I didn't add any new lights or hardware before the problem started, and all my other equipment still receives its IR signals without a problem.

Any suggestions? I'd appreciate it!

Thanks,

Brad

Does it perform normally when pressing the IR543's buttons directly?

Larry,

Yes, yes it does. When the buttons on it are pressed directly it performs perfectly.

As an addon to my above message, even when I get fairly close now, the response is very very bad.

Since it works fine when pressing the hard buttons we've eliminated any external powerline problems. I think the IR543 has a problem in it's IR reception circuitry.

Did you add extra lighting in the room since the last time it worked fine? Some lightbulbs can confuse IR detector.

Yeah, that's a good point. Any new compact flourescents, etc.?

No new lights or anything, and lately I'm finding it gets stuck in the red light ON position as well, a problem I have seen mentioned here. I would attribute it to interference but nothing in the house has changed at all. I can't think of what it could be. Hopefully a new one will fix the problem.

Brad