Girard awning remote

[Steph and Dud B]

Has anyone else been frustrated by the poor design and execution of the Girard awning remote control? From the start, I was annoyed by the dim display that can't be read outdoors. What's the point of having a battery powered awning remote if you can't use it outside?

Then, one of the magnets in the mounting plate came unglued and fell out. Those little magnets can be dangerous to a child or pet that finds them on the floor and eats them. So, I replaced the magnet mount with Velcro.

Last fall, I took the remote apart to remove the batteries for storage (why does it have three big button batteries??). No instructions anywhere on how to disassemble it. Turns out you just force the back plate off around 4 little plastic tabs on the face plate. This thing does not feel like it will survive too many of those operations.

The worst was trying to put it back together after replacing the batteries today. The soldered battery clips are sloppy, so the batteries just kind of slide around. BUT, the three batteries all have to fit into very tight little ridges on the back cover. To add to the fun, there are little magnets on the back cover that love to grab the batteries and move them out of position right as you try to wrestle the cover into place.

At one point, I managed to get everything aligned just right and the cover almost closed. No such luck!  One of the little magnets had come loose, literally jumped across the cover plate, and stuck itself to one of its peers, preventing the cover from latching on. At this point I pried ALL of the magnets off the inside so I could go back to wrestling with the cover magnet-free. I must have spent half an hour trying to put that back cover back on before I succeeded

And, no, it's no brighter with the new batteries. 🙄