Palmpad mystery revealed

["Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx>]

Almost every case of a "stuck button" that was not related to device failure
has been caused by newer style Palmpads.  In comparing the older and the
newer models I discovered that the older one has a raised strip running
along side the row of the rightmost rocker-type buttons but the newer design
uses little chiclet-style buttons and omits the raised ridge.  The ridge is
important because it keeps the buttons from being pressed when something is
placed on the Palmpad or the velcro fails and it falls of the wall and
wedges itself between something.   That's happened often enough that I've
decided to attach a small plastic strip along the edge of the newer ones.

At least this time I had a clue about the problem because the codes being
sent were B15 and OFF.  Those two codes coming in repeated sequence are
almost always RF in origin.  ooking at the Palmpad, that command is on the
lowest right hand side of the device, as are all the OFF commands, and
probably most susceptible to a "wedgie."  I used the AM radio seach
technique, but it wasn't particularly useful this time.  That was probably
because the suspect device had slide off the desktop and wedged between the
desk and file cabinet and was too low to be caught by a waist-level sweep.
I might be mistaken, but the most sensitive part of the radio to the X-10 RF
signal seems not to be the antenna, but the radio's circuit board.

--
Bobby G.