I have been using this infra-red wireless keyboard on my media PC for about a year now. I have always been disappointed with its poor range and short battery life.

So I decided to do something about it.

Instead of expensive AAA batteries, it would definitely last longer on AA cells. Four cells would also supply a higher voltage than three and so give greater output power. First thing to do is void the warranty and take it apart.

Then I simply grabbed a 4xAA battery holder and soldered the wires in place of the existing 3xAAA battery compartment. I loaded up the batteries to see if it would work.

Ah, but it didn’t. The activity LED did not light and after a few seconds I could smell the familiar aroma of burning silicon. After very quickly removing the batteries, I had a closer look to see what was up (apart from the main chip being very hot).

Turns out I had relied on the colour-coding of the wires and connected my positive to the red wire and the negative to the black wire. After all, that is the standard right ?

If I had checked more closely, I would have noticed that whoever assembled this thing had used a red wire for negative and a black wire for positive !

After I stopped swearing, I connected my battery positive to the black wire, and negative to the red wire. My engineer mind was screaming “noooo!” but I did it anyway. After that I tested again and it worked! I was very lucky the chips had not been fried by my earlier mistake.

Finally since the battery holder would not fit inside, I glued it to the underside with some hot glue. After testing I was pleased to note that the range was much increased. I can use it while leaning back on my lounge and I don’t have to carefully aim it anymore. With the larger batteries on the case, it should be quite a while before I need to change them.