Cruising Sailors Forum Archive

Yes, it is cheap...
In Response To: Wireless keyfob sounds risky ()

It does not say "Marine" on the packaging.

But seriously these use the same chips that are in a few million garage door openers. The high current solenoid controls the windlass. This controls the solenoid. The worst thing you could do is push both buttons at the same time which will pop your big breaker. I trust you have a circuit breaker for your windlass.

Before I realized I needed relay de-spiking circuitry I burned up one relay and it was a pain to get it off the circuit board to replace it. The type of failure was that the control became intermittent - it has never frozen in run mode. That was five or six years ago and I have not had a problem since. I do have wired pendant controls as backup.

BTW, while replacing the relay with a spare I happened to have on board I messed up the circuit board a bit - managed to get it going but replaced the receiver at the first opportunity. It is amazing what you can do while anchored in paradise a thousand miles from a parts source.

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