FYI for everyone who sees those annoying commercials by Billy Mays and decides to buy one of the HandySwitch devices to control lamps in their home.
Please be WARNED!!!!
I bought one of these for $14.99 and installed it and it worked great. The next day it was dead so I went to the hardware store and bought two 12V – A23 garage door opener batteries and the unit was working again. I made the assumption the original battery had been sitting around for a while and it must have been weak.
That evening I went to the store and locked my Chrysler Pacifica using the remote key fob and everything was fine. When I got home I couldn’t lock the car with either my key fob or my wifes. I was forced to lock the car manually using the interior switch. The biggest problem with this was if you opened the door with the key the alarm system is activated and you have to jump in and turn the key to get it to go off.
The car was obviously messed up so I also asked my wife to plan on taking the car to the dealer since it was still under warranty and they need to find out why the key fobs aren’t working. The electronics that monitor the key fob must be messed up. It was cold that night and I started thinking the cold was affecting the electronics.
The next morning I went to unlock the car with the key fob and it was working just fine. Dam! Now I was looking at some funky intermittent problem which are the worse to trouble shoot.
We got home that night and we realized our HandySwitch was dead again.
In the back of my head I was kind of wondering about the possibility that something was jamming the frequency used by my keyfob. I first wondered if my new neighbor changed the garage door opener and it was possibly stuck on jamming my keyfob. Then it dawned on me “could it be the HandySwitch”. I remember the directions talking about the frequencies and codes and it mentioned the problems when you use two devices in the same place. I put another fresh battery in the unit and turned the light on and tried to lock my car. It worked fine. I had my wife turn off the light and suddenly I wasn’t able to lock or unlock the car with the keyfob. I had my wife perform the same experiment as a sanity check and it did the same thing.
Here’s the issue: The HandySwitch seems to be draining the battery when it’s in the off position. It must be emmitting some serious junk in the Mhz range when the switch is in the off position and this mode is draining a good battery dead.
I pulled the battery from the device and I’m returning the unit to the store. I’m wondering if anyone else has experiences such a ridiculous problem with a HandySwitch. Many people may have had the same problem but it was a real stretch to get to the bottom of the problem. It’s about the stranges problem I’ve ever seen with a product obviously bought by so may people.
