I have a NAD SR5 Remote. Actually I have 2….
Original one that I primarily use had an issue today where the Volume keys won’t work. Several other buttons also don’t work. Replaced batteries. No change. I opened it and cleaned the pads. No change. I inspected the board under a magnifying lamp, and I don’t see any issues.
So, I put batteries in the second one. It worked for a few minutes and started doing the exact same thing! Some buttons work. Some don’t. But on the second one the Volume keys work, but the DOWN flashes quickly which is normal. The UP is somewhat inconsistent. Sometimes fast, sometimes slow. Sometimes will vary speed as the button is held down. Looking for suggestions on what else to check, as I will admit I am not highly educated in the workings of IR remotes
All modern IR remotes (generally) have a “thin” carbon/graphite substrate deposited to the inner part/surface of each rubber button. That is the weak point for all of them regardless of the make. After a number of years they all suffer from it. You can choose to do the following here:
1. make sure that the batteries you have are ok and have the required nominal voltage in them and that the battery compartment spring are not rusty and that are springy enough to make a good contact with the batteries. If in doubt, use a brand new set of batteries. TIP: don’t trust that the batteries are new. Verify the voltage with a voltmeter / multimeter
2. there is a liquid chemical some kind of carbon/graphite paint that you can buy to repaint the buttons inside (but I cannot remember the name sorry)
3. you can try to clean the rubber button/mesh (inside each button) with alcohol and some ear buds in “hope” that could establish the proper consistent contacts
4. if you can manage to “somehow” power up the PCB while is out of the case and try to short each contact pad (one @ the time) to see if the remote consistently responds to the corresponding commands. Usually dome with a pair of tweezers. This way you’ll know for sure that the rubber buttons are the “culprit” and then you can choose to proceed with number 1 or 2 (above)
5. buy a new IR remote. If you cannot buy the original one there must be some equivalents out there (of this I’m sure).
NOTE: there are some odd cases (however very rare!) when the device itself will intermittently listen to the IR remote commands making you think that is something wrong with the IR remote when in fact the remote is fine. But again these kind of defects are rare ! However to verify it is either use a known working remote or by following point 3 (above), I recommend repeating point 3 to the second remote as well to see if it behaves the same way