Got an e-mail from a customer that went like this:
I'm wondering if you have any connections in the irrigation remote/ controller repair world. I've lost my reliable repair company- Rainmaster when they were swallowed up by Toro/ Irritrol. They seem to be the only game in California. So I'm looking outside California. Thanks for any leads.
In researching this in the past I was stumped due to proprietary equipment that I didn't have access to.. Is anybody waiting on a RainMaster remote repair? Has anybody had recent experiences that might help out?
Another question is anybody besides Gregg on a new RainMaster remote waiting list?
There is some serious money to be made by somebody that can repair these things. Maybe Dan will weigh in. It almost looks as if we are going to end up with TRC being the only serious universal remote in town. That will be very sad. Nothing against TRC. They are nice people but the TRC is no where close to a RainMaster in performance and durability.
I wonder if the units couldn't be modified to use microswitches instead of the current touchpads?
Seems like a major undertaking and would be expensive, but it should be much more reliable.
The remotes were the on thing that I never got into repairing. Mainly because nobody ever sent any in for repair and the other because not a lot of companies are using them out here. Having taken both of them apart I think that the Rain Master is a better design and it certainly functions better as well. I fear that Toro is going to take the Rain Master remote and make it into a POS like the other remotes that they sell.
Inside they aren't much different than a controller. The problem is that both of them use a micro controller that is specific to each remote that you can't just up and buy from anybody but the manufacturer. Rain Master and TRC sure as hell aren't going to sell those to anybody. All of the other components are off the shelf parts except for the keypads. Unless you want to have 1000 keypads made at a time there is no way for an independent repair shop to get them
I think that both TRC and Rain Master are selling themselves short. They both are selling remotes that are basically 10 to 15 year old designs and the prices have never come down. They've more than made back their R&D costs and I'd bet that they would sell a hell of a lot more units and still make money if they'd drop the price significantly.
I'll talk to a buddy this weekend. RF is his thing and he's really good at it. I haven't seen him in years, but he's having a reunion party this weekend. Maybe I'll bring my remote along and see what he thinks of it.
I'll talk to a buddy this weekend. RF is his thing and he's really good at it. I haven't seen him in years, but he's having a reunion party this weekend. Maybe I'll bring my remote along and see what he thinks of it.
Not on a high end product like a remote..... all you would literally need is about 22 cents worth of components to de-bounce a mechanical push button switch. Depending on how it's interfaced to the microcontroller you'd probably just have a few lines of code in the microcontroller itself to handle de-bounce duties anyhow!
If you build it from scratch, sure, but I wonder if some of the more commonly used buttons and keypads have some built-in characteristics that don't bounce like metal-on-metal contacts.
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