Kids and Nice Tech Don't Always Mix 🙄

Hardware
1

I was watching TV with my wife last night. We have a soundbar with an AppleTV hooked up. All of a sudden, the volume on our TV was randomly going up and down, up and down. It was as though someone was controlling the TV from another room.

I checked for AppleTV updates. I checked for TV updates (just in case but yeah, a long shot). I also went on the web and saw a Reddit post where people were experiencing something similar. One response said something like “it’s your AppleTV remote. It’s always the remote. These posts are not unique. Answer is always the remote”.

So I took the remote downstairs and with nothing to lose, I shot a bit of DeoxIT into the crevices and cracks. I also charged the it back to 100% since I was now getting a battery low warning. With the remote at 100% and the buttons Deox-ified, I gave it another shot. Success! Everything was fine.

About an hour later while watching a show the Siri icon appeared in the bottom right corner of my TV screen. I pressed the Siri button on the remote to see what was up and it was totally seized. TOTALLY. Back to the dioxIT. That got things moving again but (said like J. Peterman from Seinfeld) – “it twas not meant to be!”.

New remote has been ordered. $79.99 from Best Buy. I suspect our open concept house with the kitchen/family room all together has its pitfalls.

Keep the remote in the living room and out of the kitchen, folks! Sticky kid hands and Apple remotes aren’t a good combo.

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This sounds a bit scary to me. Does that actually work? Spraying things into my devices sounds like a bad idea.

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Deoxit is kinda meant for that. But I knew the remote wasn’t working so I figured I had nothing to lose. It did fix the problem too. I just didn’t realize the Siri button was also physically jammed. But yeah, it’s not something I would do unless it’s a last resort on Apple stuff.

On my old guitar amp, it works wonders.

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4

When my kids were littler the Apple TV remotes had rubberised covers.

It’sa bit more difficult now they have a touch surface, but the kids are in their twenties

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My Mum is in her 80s and I’m fairly confident she does not eat on the couch where the Apple TV remote is. I experienced very similar behaviour first hand and was absolutely flummoxed by it, because what set off the runaway volume change was moving the remote.

I could hold it in my own hand and everything was fine. As soon as I simply moved my hand somewhat — up or to the side — the volume would run away.

I eventually found there was a way to reboot the remote. I can’t remember what button combo/pattern it was, but once I had done that, it worked perfectly normally.

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My kids used to love it when I airplayed keynote presentations to their TV, years ago, when they were little:

Slide 1: GOOD EVENING CHILDREN.
Slide 2: THIS IS YOUR FATHER.
Slide 3: IT IS YOUR BEDTIME.
Slide 4: ONE DAY YOU WILL THANK ME FOR THIS.

They have not yet thanked me.

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