Hi all,
I've seen in other forums that people have done experiments and found *a* cause for this problem. They've done extensive testing and here is what was concluded by various testers around the country:
When a roku device is powered off, the remote continuously tries to find and pair with the roku device. It never actually finds the roku device (because its powered off), so the remote continuously tries to find and pair with it, which drains the batteries very quickly.
A roku device may be automatically powered off if the TV USB port it's plugged into is powered off (many TVs stop providing power through their USB ports when they are turned off). This is why the roku remote battery draining issue usually happens with roku sticks (because they are often plugged into a TV USB port). This is also likely why many of the roku employees on this forum are posting responses asking users to plug their roku devices into a wall outlet.
As someone who has worked in software engineering for decades, I can tell you the good news is that this is an easy fix. Roku software engineers would simply need to write a snippet of code that tells the remote to stop searching for a roku device to pair with after just a few iterations of trying/failing to pair, and only start searching for a device to pair with again after a button on the remote is pressed. This would prevent the battery from continuously draining.
As someone who has worked in software engineering for decades, I can also tell you the bad news is that big companies like this are often slow to act on even the simplest fixes unless enough people complain.
Good luck to everyone and lets hope someone at roku will implement this simple solution sometime in the future.
