Anyone else had a PTX3 lock up on a customer? On site today to fix this for the customer. I pulled the battery to reset it, but this is the second remote I've had do this (out of 20 or so), which in my opinion is kind of high. Of course True Blue claims it's isolated and shouldn't happen again. All the firmware is up to date. I'd like to reasonably assure the customer I've got the issue kicked, as they are the kind that like everything how it's supposed to be 100% of the time. Not a bad customer, just very particular and picky. I don't mind resetting a remote myself in my own home, but the customer has dropped 30k on this system and understandably doesn't want to have a remote lockup.

I had a lock up on the first one I installed. Did a hard reset and it has not happened again.

Did you have to remove the battery, or could you have just held down the power button?

More likely, the side button will fail. We have had at least 3 or 4 of them returned for a stuck or broken side button.

About half of the side buttons have gone bad. I'm used to that and warn the customer before hand. The locking up requires removing the battery and replacing it. Seems to solve it, but pretty inexcusable for a $800 remote. Just wondering if there's something in particular I am doing to make the remote lock up or if it's just piss poor design. The PTX3 really is a piece of garbage. I love prodigy more than anyone, but this remote sucks major balls.

The PLX2 was an excellent remote. You could tell it was just built better.

I have had two clients have "lock up" issues. They describe it as "the screen gets all garbled up and won't do anything."

I have tried resetting both ways , disconnect and reconnect battery or Press and hold power button for 20 seconds. Both ways seem to fix the issue. However, for one client the "lock up" seems to be happening nearly every week. I tried replacing the remote but the issue is still happening.

That makes it sound like a programming issue is possible. Hmmm. I can't see anything causing it but I'd love to get this figured out.

I've found at least one reason why the remote would lock up on a customer: when they try to clean it. If you rub a screen with a lot of buttons (e.g. the Media source select screen), the remote could hang.

Solution is to add a screen cleaning page to the project. (an empty page with no touch buttons)

Another thing for you guys to remember when coming from 1 way land to crestron. Sometimes the 'lock up' is a communication issue and not always a hardware issue.

VTPro page flips will work but things driven with join numbers wont move or function making it appear that the panel is locked up. Hard booting with the power button or removing the battery usually fixes this but thats only because its forcing it to go out and reestablish the communication. Check your signal strength if this is a reoccurring problem.

In this project that I'm having the problems the Family room (PTX3) is about 30-40 feet MAX (walking distance) to the rack and processor. I have two EX dimmers half way in between plus an EX dimmer in the Family Room. Because of this my signal is 90+%.

HOwever, that's exactly what I was thinking it could be as well. Perhaps some RF interference is bogging up the system for a second.

How is everybody doing with the PTX3 now? Have they made any improvements with the "More" button? I have one now the gets stuck and generally feels really mushy. The customer isn't very happy with it but I'm wondering if exchanging it for a new one will be any better. Can't wait for a better handheld to come out.

The two I've sent back have come back solid. Time will tell though.

I had a few fail also so i stopped using the side button. I use the right soft key with a text label "Page>" that acts like the side trigger. That way i dont have to worry about side trigger failure.

Indicator dots in the top right tell you how many pages (like the iphone) and the page> button cycles thru the pages just as the side trigger did with page groups. Im not using page groups now though.

I haven't had any side button trigger failures yet, but I also try to program so that it's rarely used.

I  read that there is a bug or something with using PNG images for backgrounds. I have been using PNG's for backgrounds and maybe this is the cause of the wierd issue i've been having.

I just updated one today with jpeg and bmp backgrounds and added a UPS to the system. While I was there everything was working flawlessly. It was actually working flawlessly when I got there, but I updated just to be safe.

If PNG backgrounds are to blame, then that would explain it. I used PNG backgrounds on the remotes I've done that have failed.

The PNG background issue i ran into was this......

If you use a PNG background.. your buttons will not display their momentary/active state properly. They dont "flash" unless you hold the button down.

Initially i thought it might have something to do with PNG graphics so i converted every graphic in the file to bmp accept for the background. At that point i was lost and posted at IP. Pedro pointed me to the yahoo group where i found someone referencing the png background bug. I changed the png background image to jpg, changed all the other graphics back to png and viola problem solved.

FYI.. the buttons still operated properly. I could control the system perfectly. The only issue was the buttons wouldn't 'quickly' show their active state when pressed. Its basically a non-issue. Who cares what format the background graphic is in so long as i can have my buttons as transparent png's.