BeoCenter 2500 door issue

[Olli]

Hello,

I am hoping the wisdom of this forum can shed some light on a problem with a B&O system I now have.
As best I can tell it is a wall mounted BeoCenter 2500. Generally it is in good working condition and sounds great (the cassette deck doesn’t work, but oh well).

Unfortunately there is some kind of problem with the optical sensor for the doors.
They seem to be extremely sensitive, to the point that the doors are almost always in the open position, and rarely stay closed for more than a few seconds.
Being permanently open, or even permanently closed, would be one thing, but the incessant opening/closing is really annoying.

I found https://forum.beoworld.org/forums/topic/beosystem-2300-where-is-the-motion-sensor-for-the-doors-located/, which seems to explain where the IR transmitters and receivers are, but I haven’t been able to see anything wrong, and my efforts to clean and/or obstruct (to try and reduce sensitivity) don’t seem to have achieved anything.

I have attached a photo of the system with some annotations of what I understand the different components to be:
– red (4x): IR transmitters for the door sensor system. I can see these flashing violet through my phone camera, but not with the naked eye.
– purple (2x): IR receivers for the door sensor system
– green (1x): IR receiver for the remote control

It seems to be a little sensitive to how much light/activity there is in the room, but even with no other lights or movement at all it will still open/shut. I have tried taping across the transmitters and receivers, including with some small pieces of aluminium foil, to try and reduce the sensitivity/signal, but nothing I tried made much difference. I’m not sure what to conclude from this about whether it is really over-sensitive, or just randomly opens and closes.

Does anyone have any suggestions for things to try? Of course it would be great to have it working perfectly, but other solutions that would let me use the system without the incessant door noise would be great. Having the doors permanently open, or even permanently in the closed position (I could keep the glass off if it’s not feasible to do everything with the remote control), would be better than the status quo.

Thanks in advance,
Olli

[Guy]

Welcome to Beoworld!

Random thoughts:

• Plasma TV in room can cause problems with IR.
• Are you sure that a remote isn’t on permanent send?
• Try powering down/disconnecting the speakers to see if they are having any effect.
• The keypad at the front can fail but I am not sure that would affect the doors. Do all the buttons work fine?
• The lights either side of the CD and Cassette mechanism look very bright (but it may just be the camera) – have they been replaced with an aftermarket version or LEDs that may interfere with the door sensors?

[Guy]

Good discovery!

I did vaguely remember a door compatibility problem being mentioned before, but with speakers.  When the BC2500 was used with the BeoLab 3 speakers the doors misbehaved.

I did a search and found it mentioned here: https://archivedforum2.beoworld.org/forums/t/46913.aspx

And also here for BC2300 (the link within the above thread no longer works):  https://archivedforum.beoworld.org/forums/t/32921.aspx

I would have a play around with the location of the input device and try some different cables (and different cable routing).  Hopefully you will find a solution that works for your preferred setup!

[Olli]

Hello,

Thanks for the suggestions!

There isn’t a plasma TV in the room, and the problem occurs even when the remote is out of the room (I also checked by looking at the IR transmitter LED on the remote with my phone camera). The keypad seems to work fine, and I suspect the lights are just being made to look bright by the photo – I don’t know about them having been replaced, but I only recently got this system and don’t know anything about its maintenance history.

I haven’t tried powering off/disconnecting the speakers, as I realised something else first: it seems to be related to having an external device connected to the aux input of the system. With no device connected, or my laptop connected, the door problem seems to go away. When it is plugged into a desktop PC (either onboard audio or a USB dongle) then the doors go crazy. I guess the BeoSystem must be sensitive to some kind of badly-filtered electrical noise/coupling coming from the desktop.

Not sure what to do about this yet, but at least it’s something to look into further…

[Author]

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