Harmony 720 Official Thread. For all info and FAQs - Page 58

For those with worn buttons that require stabbing with long slender fingernails to get any sort of response you can buy a keypad repair kit. I think anything with a conductive ink or paint would work. My remote is back and recognizes the slightest touch of the buttons. Not sure how long the fix will last, but I figured it is worth a shot before buying a new remote.

To disassembly the remote there are 6 small phillips head screws. 4 under the battery cover and two under the top front side of the bezel next to the power button. Here is a picture of the location for the top two screws thanks Kevin T on the AVS forum.



Disassembled remote with the repair kit that I bought at a local Fry's Electronics.

One weird thing I've noticed is I have a 'Watch TV' activity where it will do this:

1. Turn on TV
2. Turn on receiver
2. Select input for TiVo

9 out of 10 times it misses turning on the TV unless I'm aiming the remote dead center at the sensor at 5' away. It has always been this way. If I press help, and it asks if it was fixed, it's 50/50 .. if I do it a third time, it is almost 100%.

If I do stuff manually by pressing devices, choosing the TV, pressing the power button, it works perfect every time. I could be dancing with the remote aimed at the wall, TV turns on fine. I could be doing back flips off a trampoline through the dining room past the living room and into the kitchen while hitting the TV power and it'll turn on fine.

It's ONLY when I use the activity to 'Watch TV' that it doesn't get the power on properly.

It's freaking ANNOYINGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG.

Help?

i'm having an issue with my ps3 slim and the harmony adapter with my 720, i have the 'repeat delay' cranked all the way down and it still will register 2 presses sometimes when i just press it once quickly, is there a way to increase that delay even more?

Can't find the screws at the top of the remote - yours appears to be slightly different than mine. What am I missing?

Are you peeling back the thin black plastic veneer as shown in the photo to reveal the screws? What do you find under the plastic if there are no screws there? (Note: The plastic is lightly glued, so you'll need to work a corner up and then gently work it apart to break the adhesive bond.)

Okay, so I bought the CaliKote and I have my Harmony 720 apart. Call me an idiot, but I'm at a loss for where to go from here.

I see two kinds of contacts. The black buttons on the remote (numbers 0-9, "Guide", "Info", "Menu", "Exit", etc.) appear to have a conductive surface on the bottom of the rubber button that, when depressed, comes in contact with and bridges two wires on the PCB to complete the circuit. I would think that cleaning the bottom of the rubber button then using the conductive paint from the repair kit to replace that conductive surface would rejuvenate those buttons. Unfortunately, those aren't the buttons I'm having trouble with!

My problem buttons are the hard plastic silver ones--primarily the six programmable buttons on either side of the color LCD screen, but sometimes the D-pad in the middle of the remote too. It looks to me like these buttons have a non-conductive rubber "dot" on the back side that normally rests lightly atop a silvered mylar "dome" on the PCB. When the plastic button is pushed, the rubber "dot" pushes down on the mylar dome and causes it to deflect inward, where it presumably makes contact with a second silvered pad below to complete the circuit. These "domed" pads have some adhesive tape near them whose purpose seems to be to seal the edges of the PCB, perhaps to prevent contamination from getting under the dome, which might in turn prevent solid electrical contact between the dome and the pad below. (The adhesive has come loose, so that might be why I'm having problems!)

I *think* I need to remove the adhesive and gently separate the PCB layers to get under the "domes" and clean out any contamination. I don't think the CaiKote is going to help me much with those buttons (unless I find the silver surface has been abraded away or something).

Can anyone tell me if I'm on the right track? If I'm not, could you point me in the right direction?

I'm hesitant to just start trying to peel back this thin, delicate mylar layer without knowing for sure that's the right thing to do!

Thanks!

Try increasing the inter-device delay for your TV. Go to your device -> Settings -> Adjust the delays (speed settings).
Update the remote and check after every adjust of the delay.
For example, my Samsung LCD has a 1000ms inter-device delay.

Found the screws - thanks. unfortunately, the remote is now fried - nothing displays on the screen event though it appears to update properly.

I unplugged my screen when I took the remote apart...did you? Did you remember to plug it back in (and are you sure you didn't reverse the connector)?

If you didn't unplug it when you took it apart, you might have pulled one of the wires loose. That would be easy to spot if you took it apart again, and possibly easy to fix with a dab of solder.

I didn't intentially unplug it, but I will look again. Is there a wire to look for?

Whoops--sorry. What I unplugged was the connector from the gold contacts on the bottom of the remote to the circuit board--nothing to do with the LCD. The LCD has some ribbon cables that tuck back underneath it and probably plug into the cb beneath the screen. Unlikely you would have dislodged those. Sorry...I'm outta ideas.

No worries, thanks for the help. I neglected to say that after cleaning it yesterday the black wire to the battery terminal post came off - after re-soldering, I put it on the charging cradle and the screen slowly started turning white and it was very hot. Not sure what could have ahppened, but I think I fried the screen. It lights up when you put the battery in, but it's just a blue background, nothing else.

You could see if Logitech will give you a 50% off coupon for another one, or I saw that Tiger Direct had refurb of these for ~89 I think.

I'm not sure what has happened, but my remote is no longer working properly. When I select an activity the lcd screen no longer has all of the controls it did before.

Specifically, when i select Watch TV, there are no longer controls for my dish network DVR.

I added a new activity to use my HTPC, and I ended up re-adding all of my activities because they no longer worked correctly. I thought i remembered that it took the remote a week or so to learn the most use controls for each activity, but maybe im wrong. Either way it has been 3 weeks and the remote still will not add the DVR controls to my Watch TV activity, so I am stuck hitting the Devices button and manually selecting the PVR if i want to control it.

For another example when i select the PC activity i have to manually press devices and select Computer in order to send controls to the HTPC ir receiver.

As far as the software is concerned all of the devices are present in all of their corresponding activities, but the remote will not control some of them unless i manually select via the Devices button...

Your post is very confusing. Simply adding an activity to a remote should not do anything to existing activities. Thus, something else is going on. A couple of questions come to mind:

1) Have you ever had a different Harmony remote?
2) Have you ever had a different account on the Logitech Harmony website?

Mistakenly logging into the wrong account, or one tied to an older remote, could explain why your existing activities were changed when you added the new one.

Also, from some of the phrasing in your post, it seems like you might misunderstand how the remote works. Specifically, "I thought i remembered that it took the remote a week or so to learn the most use controls for each activity, but maybe im wrong." Harmony remotes do not have any ability to automagically add device capabilities during usage. The way the remote operates after you've programmed it is the way it will continue to operate until the next time it's programmed. (When they call it a "learning remote", that simply means that it's capable of recording the IR signals from remotes for devices that aren't yet included in the Harmony device database...but you still have to do that through the programming process. It doesn't learn by itself.)

Has anyone else ever played with the remote programming, possibly without your involvement (maybe one of your kids, or a gizmo-savvy guest)? That could explain how the remote "magically" added some capabilities over time, and if they created a new Logitech account to make their changes, that would also explain why the remote set itself up differently after you made changes using your account.

Since the 720 is now discontinued...

The buttons on mine are worn badly... I don't care, since I know where the buttons are, but my SO doesn't... I was considering replacing the 720 with a 900 or One to keep similar features. The biggest difference, besides a completely different layout , is the number of "soft keys" or touch areas. Our 720s have 6 programmable "soft keys" while the newer remote have only 3 touch areas for activities... I assume they are still programmable once an activity has started?

The alternative is to find a new 720 on ebay...

Anybody that's switched to a 900 or One have any comparison feedback?

Thanks

I recently picked up a One. Haven't delved into what flexibility is available, but I know this much: The touchscreen is not rigidly limited to three areas. In my current config, the activities are listed 3 at a time on the touchscreen, but once an activity is selected, the unique device commands are shown on the touchscreen in groups of six. (Maybe there's a way to force activities to list out in groups of six as well?)

There are also two "buttons" at the bottom of the touchscreen that facilitate navigation. For instance, when in an activity, I think one of those buttons is the "device" button. When in a device submenu, one of those buttons becomes the "return to activity" button.

I've only had the One for a few days, but so far I haven't felt limited or unhappy with it compared to my 720. If someone put a gun to my head and told me to complain about something, I was used to being able to pick up the 720 and press one of the six programmable hard keys around the LCD window (by feel) to launch an activity without looking at the screen, and it didn't matter if the screen was "awake" or not. With the One, the activity selections are only available via the touchscreen; even if you know the right region of the screen to press for your activity, if you do that while the screen is dark it only wakes up the screen, and then you have to press again to activate the activity. Alternately, you have to "jiggle" the remote as you pick it up to wake up the screen before selecting an activity.

It's definitely an extra step I have to take to get started with an activity, but I consider it only a slight annoyance.

One thing I wish the One had: red/green/yellow/blue colored buttons to support my cableco STB's A-B-C buttons and my PS3's X-O-triangle-square buttons. The touchscreen is easily programmed to support these...but i use these buttons frequently, and would prefer to have hard buttons than use the touchscreen. (The touchscreen cannot be used by feel--you *have* to look at it and make sure you're pressing the right part of the screen for your button, again a slight annoyance for me.)

Sorry for resurrecting an old thread, but before I spend any money on this remote I'd like to know if anyone tried this fix and if it permanently fixed their problem. Half of the metal buttons on my remote don't work anymore unless i press really hard.

Don't really have the money to replace the remote, but don't want to waste money on a fix if it doesn't really work. I'd rather save up for a new one. Thanks.

I managed to get my charger cradle to make good contact with the remote again last night using a little aluminum foil to bridge the weak contacts.

The charge contacts on my remote still look pretty good but the gold plating on one of the cradle contacts is disintegrating. Under the gold the contacts are made of a black material -- I'm not sure if its plastic or metal but evidently it's not conductive. For a while I could get the remote to charge by jiggling it in the cradle or cleaning the contacts with a swab and alcohol, but last week even that wasn't working. Googling the issue turned up lots of forum postings noting the problem but few solutions.

So last night I made two small strips of aluminum foil, about 1x2 cm. I installed the strips into the cradle's two contact points so the edges were tucked inside the cradle's plastic frame and the foil was overtop of the contacts. I popped the remote on the cradle as usual (sandwiching the exposed foil between the cradle and remote charge contacts) and it started charging without hesitation.

I don't know whether passing a current through these differing metals will eventually cause the contact's plating to to diminish further, but for now at least the remote is getting charged. My 30-second investment of time and free materials seems to have done the job. Hope others can benefit.

Dave

Riddle me this...I have a Harmony 720 that the battery has died on. I also have a Harmony 880 that the screen is messed up on. I'm thinking of trying to swap the screen from the 720 to the 880 and just keeping that remote. Any thoughts on the difficulty of this procedure? Should I just go ahead and commit to a new remote.

Neither, spend a couple bucks & get a new battery for the 720.

my left middle off screen button is becoming increasingly unresponsive, requiring very firm pushes with occasional wiggles to activate, contemplating disassembling and looking for possible causes unless this is a trend seen already?