Remotes with sturdy switches???

[mathog]

Pretty much every remote I have seen has the same sort of electronics. There is a circuit board with two pads for each button. Above it is a rubber mat which sticks up through holes in the top of the remote as buttons with labels. The bottoms of these buttons are black and contain carbon which lets them conduct. They are kept "off" by being offset upward in concave spaces on the bottom of the rubber pad. When the button is pushed the rubber flexes down, the carbon part touches the two contacts, and the circuit is completed.

Unfortunately over time the rubber breaks down a bit, releasing the carbon which is needed for the switch to work. Also oozing a sticky viscous fluid, probably a plasticizer, onto the circuit board. It is possible to restore these remotes for a while by cleaning off the circuit board and "sandpapering" the contact surface by dragging them on a piece of printer paper until a black smear results. But after a while the rubber surface degrades again and stops working. Other temporary fixes are to paint on conductive paint (which eventually flakes off) or glue on bits of aluminum foil (which also eventually falls off.) Button failures with the "sandpaper" method are especially a problem if one of the tiny buttons is used a lot, like "exit" on our Sony RM-VL600 remotes. These tiny buttons always fail before the larger ones do. I really like these Sony remotes, when they are working, but keeping them working is becoming more and more difficult.

Does anybody know of a universal IR remote which uses some other, more sturdy, switch technology?

(We also have a small remote keyboard which can be used to control MythTV, but not the other components. However externally it looks like it uses exactly the same type of switch technology.)

[heyted]

Not universal, but TiVo remotes are fairly high quality. I'm currently using a remote from a TiVo Roamio.

[paulh]

This guy recently posted about a remote he was manufacturing. Not sure if it's exactly what you are looking for. Personally I don't like the look of it and it's quite expensive for what it is.

viewtopic.php?t=4076

https://www.tindie.com/products/bdmicro ... or-mythtv/