How many commands will the VL1000 learn?

When you fill it up, what kind of error message do you get?

Because I'm tinkering with one, and its memory seems limited. More importantly, it doesn't fail gracefully or give any kind of error message -- it seems to just drop keys.

Is it just my remote, or is that the way these things work?

I don’t think you will ever get to see an error message that the VL1000 memory is full. It has lots of learning capacity, probably close to or the same as the AV3000, which I have not been able to fill up, and I loaded a command (sometimes 2-3 commands) to every key on every screen just to test it out. Dropping keys may have something to do with the learning method, or possibly the equipment being controlled. What do you mean by “dropping keys”? Does the 1000 learn successfully and then later on the key doesn’t work, or does it just not accept the other remote’s signal?

It accepts the code, and it works. Then later on, the key won't work. Typically, all learned keys on the same device are affected.

When I go to reprogram the keys, I find that there's still something (God knows what) in memory. So I have to clear it first, and then I can re-learn.

Once or twice, I had to program nearly every key on a device (because only the power button and one or two others were provided). When I got done with the last keys I found that some of the first keys were no longer working. Again, I had to clear them before they would re-learn.

Note that I'm learning to a lot of hard buttons, too, and not just to the LCD buttons. My Aiwa CD player, code 4022 has no transport (play, ff, etc.) buttons that I can tell. So I had to learn them manually. I have to do a lot of that. It's not that bad, but after an hour and a half or two of programming I don't want it to all get lost when the unit hangs.

I'm giving it another go, but I'm not real confident right now.

I don't know what would cause that. Are your batteries good? Other than that, the only thing I can think of is a defective remote. Have you had it for long? I don't remember hearing this problem before with the 1000.