JP1 Remotes

[just4fn]

I programmed a 15-2116 with extender 3 for my father-in-law. He has been using it for about 4 years. Last night he said it quit working. I went over to his house and I removed the new batteries,reinstalled them and pushed power and is said mem fault. I tried several time but kept getting the same result. I had to reprogram the remote with my saved file. It now works. Does this usually mean the remote is starting to fail? What other problems could it be? Thanks, Doug
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thanks, just4fn

[johnsfine]

It means the contents of the eeprom were corrupted. It does not DIRECTLY represent a hardware malfunction. It probably doesn't represent any kind of hardware problem.

When changing batteries, it is likely to deactivate the extender. Even dropping or shaking the remote might deactivate the extender.

If you promptly reactivate the extender after deactivating it all should be OK.

But if you don't understand the extender is just deactivated, and instead observe the remote is seriously malfunctioning, AND you try various things to regain control and/or understand what is wrong, there is a decent chance you could find some key sequence that will make the remote's firmware corrupt the contents of its eeprom (because the firmware is confused by the deactivated extender). Once that happens you need to reload the extender as you did.

A remote running with a deactivated extender is not a particularly stable condition. We don't have a lot of understanding and haven't done a lot of testing of what might confuse the firmware.

If you intentionally deactivate an extender (for example to do learning) it is a good idea to do a factory reset to really remove the extender before learning, then reload via JP1 cable when you want the extender back.