Creative Reassembly of a Remote

[Snowblind]

A plow is a tool, so here it goes! I've made a video detailing most of an very interesting modification to the plow control paddle for my Boss plow.

I have been living with some finicky buttons on the remote for my plow for over a year, and finally got annoyed enough to do something about it.

Symptom: Push a button once, plow computer reads two key-strokes or more, sending it into auto-up or auto-down depending on which you pushed.

Cause: Another symptom: Torn button diaphragm for the conductive rubber pads. (Your case may just be bad/worn rubber, or dirty board contacts.)

Goal of "Upgraded Repair": Replace rubber all-together with real buttons or switches. <-Succeeded!

You can use any "normally open" momentary switch.

It can be done to key-fobs, TV remotes, Game controllers, calculators, keyboards, anything that uses conductive rubber to circuit-board as a button! I recommend buying a bulk bag of micro-switches for anything like a TV remote. You should be able to find a bag of 5 somewhere for car remotes. Place the switch underneath the original button if small enough.

Do not do like I did and take apart your "working" plow controller on a night before work when your truck is your daily-driver!

I could have used longer jumpers from the switches, made up a proper "cable", covered the hole in the paddle, and put the switches right in the dash, but there's too much wiring under there to justify shoving more crap (the paddle's brain) into the bird's nest on my LS1-powered truck.

To the meat!!

I'm sure this can help someone, and I did troll though the forum to see if there was a better sub-forum, be couldn't see one.

 

[GremlinRC]

Thanks for sharing. I will be honest and admit I skipped through the video. Assuming these are low voltage signals, you could benefit from adding some ceramic capacitors across the switch to help with any debounce. Maybe 100nF ceramics. Maybe they are already on the board. but they wouldn't hurt on the switches too.

Good job Sir.

 

[Snowblind]

My explanations can be incredibly dry, I admit; I don't expect anyone who's done it before, or knows what I did to watch the whole thing.
...I'm pretty sure the board is low voltage, but does not appear to have been designed with any de-bounce. (There are 3 (fairly big) surface-mount caps I could spot on the whole board.) The double strokes have been mitigated enough for my taste, that is, altogether by using the switches; Though I thank you a lot and I will try to remember about the ceramic caps in future projects.
...I'll never choose to use conductive rubber buttons in my own builds, they are too problematic and short lived.

I will be using microswitches to repair my truck's fob, as it's getting old using the corner of my dresser to start my truck with clean circuit board contacts, and worn out rubber nibs. The key-less entry remote for my 1999 truck works better than the one for my 2005 car, meaning they both are really bad. I do know you can replace the rubber pieces, but I don't like them anyway.