HR92 battery connection tips

[Jemster]

[G4RHL]

Interesting. After 8 years of use I have never had or seen the HR92 flicking on and off when I change the batteries.

[Jemster]

That really is interesting. I have 16 of these things and they were all bought together 4 years ago. They are all pretty crappy connection-wise and I always hate the job of changing batteries as it usually results in having to do a little creative bending, or tapping of the units. Often I’ll get the batteries in, and the process of popping the cap back on will cause the unit to reset or just plain switch off, resulting in more fiddling around. I’d thought it was normal as a few mentions have been made of bending the bottom tabs up a little to make better contact.

I use Duracell Ultras and always have done. Maybe another battery make would fit better as I do notice a bit of play in the chamber using these ones. One of my fixes had been slipping a couple of bits of paper down the side of the chamber to make a slightly tighter fit.

[CT1]

I have similar problems. Have tried various makes of batteries and bending contacts. No significant long term improvements.

[Jemster]

Wonder if the design changed over the years in some way. Interesting stuff, gonna take a look at this spare unit and see how it comes apart… really don’t want to trash it in the process as I have plans a few months away to reuse it…

[anniesboy]

HR92 disassembly

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBGRc8XpOZI&t=9s

[Jemster]

HR92 disassembly

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBGRc8XpOZI&t=9s

Perfect! Thanks. Seeing this it seems to me that it’ll be to do with the 2 contacts on to the circuit board at the front of the unit. That’s similar to the dt92 design that also caused me problems. Bending those contacts sorted out the reliability of the thermostat so I’ll try for a bit more pressure here.

Nice design for disassembly. Wonder why it causes so much difficulty for reliability.

[prescott]

Perfect! Thanks. Seeing this it seems to me that it’ll be to do with the 2 contacts on to the circuit board at the front of the unit. That’s similar to the dt92 design that also caused me problems. Bending those contacts sorted out the reliability of the thermostat so I’ll try for a bit more pressure here.

Nice design for disassembly. Wonder why it causes so much difficulty for reliability.

First post here! So lucky I found this thread! I also have exact same problems, but not on all units! Im using Eneloops. Please do tell if that solved it or what did.

[Jemster]

[prescott]

Can you encircle on pictures what exactly you mean?

[Jemster]

Can you encircle on pictures what exactly you mean?

Looks like the pics got downsized. Ok, so the tabs... 2 pictures, the one with red and blue lines - the blue is the top line of the faceplate, the red circle is around the 'bent' tab and the red line shows the angle of the top of this tab in relation to the top of the faceplate.



The second picture with the yellow and green lines show how the two edges are parallel on the good faceplates. This means the latches engage reasonably well with the loops moulded into the HR92 body and hold the faceplate fairly tightly to the valve itself.



Not really sure what's going on here. I've looked carefully at the tab and it's definitely the way it was made, it's not loose, it's not been bent by anybody, this would appear to be a manufacturing defect. Going to keep going through the rest of them and see if it's a one-off.

And this photo shows the 2 springs that need bent out a little bit circled in yellow.

The two slots I've circled in green are where the corresponding latches in the earlier pictures go. Hope this makes it clearer.

[Jemster]

Enough for tonight. Out of 9 hr92s, I’ve fixed 5 that were all prone to reboot with a few taps…
1 with the mis-formed tabs
1 with a corroded battery terminal - only 1 side of 1 terminal and no water ingress to be seen. Needed a little contact cleaner to get this one back to running perfectly
3 that needed internal springs re-tensioned

The other 4 are working well. Tomorrow I’ll get stuck in to the 6 upstairs.

[G4RHL]

There could be another reason for poor battery contacts that never crossed my mind until the other day. The size of the batteries.I had always assumed that batteries were the same. In length and girth that is. The other day I needed to replace a couple of AAA batteries in a motion sensor. The originals were Philips batteries. It was a Philips product. I inserted new ones of a different make and they were slacker. Not sufficient for the device to fail but it was obvious the Philips batteries were ever so marginally longer, giving a tighter fit. I don’t suppose Philips were aware of this. They have produced a product and simply supplied their batteries. It could be that in designing the product Honeywell used a specific type of battery that fitted well but never thought to check different make batteries which may not be so snug.

[Jemster]

I know what you mean, I've a couple of AA powered devices here that don't play well with some batteries. No doubt there's a spec. somewhere for precise measurements of an AA that nobody sticks too . It has to be said that overall the battery chamber design is pretty poor. There's far too much movement allowed at the base of the unit - the guides are really only touching the top half of the batteries. The lower spring clips have a bit of movement built in to them so you can actually drop a pair of batteries in and then move them in and out of alignment with the contacts by nudging them with a screwdriver from the underside. People obviously won't be doing this in general, but it means when you drop a couple of batteries in the chamber, they may or may not be well aligned on the spring tabs. Even if they are aligned when you put them in, after a few months usage / vibration / hot & cold cycles, there's no guarantee they'll still be aligned.

[therealfronty]

How strange, I've got 13 HR92's, had them 18 months, bought them second hand so no idea exactly how old they are but I've never had any problems like this.