Drayton Digistat 3 broke

[Coniferman]

It's about 3 years old - display blank all of a sudden. New batteries made no difference. It happened once about a year ago but a bit of fiddling got it working again but not this time.

Just wondering if this could be a known issue before I start taking it apart. (Have taken it apart before when I realised the + and - buttons were the wrong way around.)

I guess a loose connection somewhere, possibly the battery terminals.

Its' not the RF model.

 

[ChrisR]

Battery-drawer terminals are a common problem on these. You can get the battery drawers out fairly easily, and poke something up inside to clean the contacts.

 

[Coniferman]

Battery-drawer terminals are a common problem on these. You can get the battery drawers out fairly easily, and poke something up inside to clean the contacts.

Thanks for that, you persuaded me to continue messing with the batteries rather than taking it all apart and it suddenly sprung back into life.

Not quite sure what the problem was - no corrosion and plenty of spring in the terminals inside the unit.

I am wondering if the metal bar in the drawer was the wrong way around. It was just a flat piece of metal connecting the two batteries. I reversed the metal so that there are now two metal tabs making contact with the batteries and it seems a much better fit. Can anyone confirm if it should be like this?

 

[gooner123]

If the drayton digistat receiver fails to start central heating with red and green lights on continuously and replacing batteries in the remote doesn't work, then you can bypass it as follows:
Switch off the power to the receiver
Remove the 2 screws at the bottom of the receiver and take off the front cover
The cable that leads to the boiler will have 5 leads, don't touch the blue brown and earth leads, but the extra 2 leads (may be grey and brown) will be connected to 2 separate terminals on the right.
Remove these 2 leads from the terminals, twist them together and put a piece of electrical tape over the join.
Put back the front cover and switch the power back on
You should now be able to control the bolier using the on/off/timer switch on the boiler itself - under the flap that pulls down.
If it works then you've proved that the digistat receiver is faulty.

If you want to replace the digistat yourself then they cost about £90. Make a note of which terminals all the leads are connected to (3 on the power input lead and 5 on the lead to the bolier) and connect them to the same terminals on the new unit.