A client came in to his vacation home last week for the first time since I did an upgrade on his Elan system (new controller, 2 HR200s to replace RTI T2C handhelds, and a tp4 touch panel). I went there and gave him a quick tutorial on the system and everything was fine. 2 days later, he calls to tell me that the living room hr200 had just quit working, screen was black, buttons wouldn't light up. I was certain when he called that he'd just moved the charging cradle to a switched outlet. When I got there, it was just as he said. I dropped it on the bedroom remote's charging cradle, waited, and nothing. I put the bedroom remote's battery in it, and it still wouldn't power up. I RMAd the remote, showed him how to change rooms so he could control the living room with the bedroom remote, and told him I'd be back in a couple days with a new remote.

Today, I took the new remote over. He had gone back to his primary home, but had family using the house for the week. The guy says he picked up the remote this morning, and it was completely dead, just like the last one. So, a few minutes of checking to see if it was the exact scenario as the last one, I call tech support and get an RMA. They had put it in the same charging cradle, plugged into the same outlet the living room remote had been on. That was the only connection I could immediately make, and plugged the new remote's charger into the same panamax unit that the living room AVR and components are plugged into, showed them how to switch remotes, and left.

I got home about an hour ago, and was going to finish a proposal after a quick bite, sat down in front of my TV, picked up my HR200, and it was completely dead. The girlfriend said it worked this morning for her.

Haven't called tech support to see if I can RMA another remote for the same problem as the 2 I just RMAd at a different location yet, but I'd sure as hell like to know what is going on. The customer's house has hardwood floors throughout, and my house has hardwood in the living room, though I did walk through the carpeted bedroom, but I'm ruling out a static charge mostly just because I can't see anything that would have built up a charge capable of frying a remote. Any ideas? Or am I just developing some weird superpower to kill remotes? By the way, the customer's remotes have been functioning fine since October of last year. I periodically do system checks for them. My remote has been fine since I installed it 6 or 8 months ago.