Repairing my Kenwood A/V receiver's remote-control sensor
Posted by Tom Moertel Fri, 25 May 2007 21:42:00 GMT
The Kenwood audio-video receiver that forms the core of my home theater system stopped responding to its remote control. As I discovered shortly thereafter, having to leave the couch to fiddle with knobs degrades the “home theater experience.” Clearly, something had to be done.
I knew the receiver was the culprit because the remote control worked fine with other components of my system. I figured the IR sensor had gone bad and did a little Googling for “Kenwood” and “IR sensor” and “problem”. The results revealed that many other Kenwood customers had the same problem.
The cause of the problem, I learned, was that the solder joints which connect the IR sensor’s leads to the display board eventually fail because of thermal expansion. That explanation seemed to account for what I was observing, so I cracked the case in search of visual confirmation.
First, I found the joints where the IR sensor was connected to the circuit board. The vertical red line shows where I found them:
Then I examined the joints closely. Sure enough, at least one had completely failed:
The problem confirmed, I moved to the solution phase of the project. With my soldering iron, I touched-up the joints:
It wasn’t my best work, but it did the job.
Now my receiver is back on speaking terms with its remote control, and I have returned to the modern world. Life is good
readers
Neat fix! Reminds me of how I had to fix a circuit board in an old Nissan 1986 300zx, saved me >$350 at the time.
Interesting site, stumbled upon you by googling for open-source statistics software. I use winxp and linux (ubuntu 7.04) guess I will give R a try… I do have some experience with SAS, not sure if that will help or hinder me though.
Take care,
-Steve
Holy crap! Thank you! Same machine, same problem, same fix! I am back to my techno happiness…
I have the same problem with my VR-209, tapping the unit on the top helps to temporarily fix the issue, but I will remove the cover and re-solder those joints for a more permanent fix.
That reciever was it a KRF-V7050D? Because my remote is not acting right with my reciever and I was just about to buy a new remote until I came across your fix.