Veon TV IR Sensor/Remote Failing?

Yes all those previous posters tips will apply.

The symptoms sound exactly the same as what happened with my AKAI 50", and it's cheap generic remote. The problem with these remotes is that the programming with them is very nonstandard and if my theory is correct - specific to rebranding by either Tempo Australia,TWG Ltd or the controller board manufacturer which is known as MSTAR. So good luck using an "all for one" or other highend replacement universal remote, as they don't work or at least with my Akai. The warehouse sylvia park used to stock replacement remotes for these I have been told, but you'd want to go instore and find a knowledgeable staff member who has been around in the AV department long enough to know where to look. I had trouble finding anyone on the phone who could determine whether there were replacements in stock. There is an Australia based company which does exact replacement remotes for this model and Veon as well which can be found with a simple search in ecosia or your search engine of choice. They are about $60 or less from memory.

In my case I chose to repair the remote manually. Here is what worked for me, what didn't, and possibly why:

1) Opened the remote and cleaned all contacts with WD40. Bad idea as it turns out WD40 not only contains ISO alcohol but also a lubricating grease. Any type of oil will have a dielectric effect upon conductivity, thus resulting in intermittent contact between the electrically conductive coating on the rubber button pads and the PCB tracks which are bridged by the button.

2) Cleaned all contacts with Acetone, used a tin foil mini cake tin to bridge conductive button switch tracks on the PCB with the battery in (to isolate the button contact pads not conducting from the PCB tracks not conducting) when the Acetone had all evaporated, then used my multimeter on the IR LED output leads to check for pulsing of the voltage. Be very careful cleaning the rubber buttons with Acetone (never use ISO alcohol on these or WD40) as the rubber reacts to the chemical and shrinks slightly, so you will have trouble getting the rubber button overlay back into the remote evenly. Learn from my mistakes there. ;-) Soap and water is your best bet for the rubber button portion.

3) The infrared LED on mine was visibly weak when viewed on a CMOS sensor based digital camera, compared to other remotes with the same nominal operating voltage for the IR-LEDs, so I replaced the IR LED with a pulled 20 year-old japanese made one from a spare circuit board lying around. I had not thought an IR LED manufactured within the last 10 years would have failed but could not get the remote to transmit reliably further than about 2 metres from the TV so I had to figure this in as a possible fault causation. This restored the relative IR brightness to the same as my other working remotes.

4) Despite all the above several buttons still were not working so I tested the input lines from the remote controller chip with my multimeter once again on the IR LED output tracks from the control chip and found that a few of them were completely dead at the point where the surface mount chip (SMT) leads met the PCB.

On closer visual inspection I noticed that almost all of the SMT chip leads had what appeared to be dry joints (eg mottled dull grey appearance) and a tiny bit less solder than what would be needed for the ideal join if hand soldered rather than in a flow process solder bath as would be found in a large factory. I then proceeded to remove all the solder from the joints with a solder sucker but left two pads connected at diagonal ends of the chip to sink heat and keep a mechanical connection in place. After this I reflowed fresh lead based solder into the joints and wicked a few of them onto the PCB pads where the pad was showing signs of oxidative damage and deterioration, and also did this finally on the two remaining pads. I scraped some of the protective coating off the PCB on some of them to make the solder pad longer with more surface area also. After this I tested the output and all button contacts with tin foil again to bridge them and found the output was working perfectly. I then snapped the remotes plastic click-locks around the case back together again, and tested it upstairs on the TV and all was working again, from the other side of my lounge. Success finally.

So in my case it was a multi-systemic failure caused by a dying infrared LED and bad initial soldering in the factory of the controller chips joints most likely. I can't tell you all how much frustration and time it caused to fix this,but the feeling of success beat all the difficulty and "wasted time" along the way hands down. ;-) And before you ask - Yes I checked for fresh batteries numerous times before the self torture of this repair.

On another note I've been trying with no success to enter factory service mode on my "AKAI" AK50FDLED (warranty expired) to attempt to fix a different issue and also access the TV over the RS232 service port contained in the DB15 connector for the VGA in. According to my detailed research and inferred conclusions into MSTAR controller board - based rebadged AKAI Televisions as sold by the warehouse NZ, these won't enter RS232 (5 volt TTL) serial console mode without enabling the option in the service menu, which I can't access. I have tried probably about 20-30 possible codes and simply cannot get it to come up. Other than wasting time trying to build a brute-force factory mode infra-red code scanner to enter service mode I would really rather just buy anyone here a $25 box of beer, who can give me a code that works! PM me if you have one please, along with your contact details.

Also has anyone ever managed to find a working firmware update for this model or similar that didn't brick their TV? I haven't tried any yet, and as I found out when calling the useless warehouse tech support number when it was under warranty they simply refuse to give any out for updating using the USB port. Which leaves me with one last option - decompiling my TVs firmware which is another upcoming project. For anyone else interested in doing this on theirs I can furnish you with copious amounts of extra information privately, and save you time searching online. The CPU architecture is MIPS32 I believe, and they run a customized version of Linux on the MSTAR SOC as with so many other rebadged TVs by this Chinese company found around the world. The panel in my AKAI and probably most Veons seems to be Samsung from what I saw but I may be wrong. It's a very sharp image anyway.

One other thing. The noisy switchmode PSU board (which spews out a lot of RFI) in my model at least - had signs of serious overheating issues, and there was actually Scorch marks on the PCB around the Regulators and High wattage resistor leads, where smoke or some type of gaseous vapor had over time moved up the vertically mounted PCB towards the heat vents on the upper portion of the plastic case. Either the components are way outside the engineering specs tolerance levels, or the whole PSU is a bit too weak for the rest of the TV, which leads me to claim that some of these TVs represent an actual fire risk. In my case I just make sure I don't leave it on too long un-attended, but I'm considering either fitting a cooling fan to the back or else just buying a whole new PSU board. You've got to wonder if some of these products are even tested for fire regulation compliance at all before entering the market here... *Makes me wonder if that applies to certain brands of cellular basestation also.*

Zepanda66

LastPass

Brunzy

dc2daylight

clive100

richms

FineWine

Zepanda66

dc2daylight