Automatic Litterbox Central

Hi there,

I got home and found that my Littermaid stopped working. OH CRAP i say..... The red light is on but no movement even on reset (on/off) or unplug. I dig though my reciepts and call them with my info. Tell them I've done all the unplugging for 10 minutes, on/off, cleaned the sensors, etc... (can you tell i've done this before!). She says she is going to walk me through a "reset". Hmm I say. She has me unplug the unit, open the waste receptical and on each side of the end of the track there is a white plastic thing. on the side of it you can push and it "clicks". She had me do that 7 times on each side and then re-plug in. Ta-da!!!!! It worked again! Never heard or done that before and LM has replaced at least 3 for me in the past 5 years for not working! So next time your stuck...try this!

Thanks Danniemac. That really helped me out. I love my Littermaid, but sometimes they just quit working. I have had one replaced by Littermaid after 10 months. This one, the replacement, stopped working about a year ago. I went out and bought a new one. After I put the new one together and was moving the old one, I decided to plug the old one in for one last try. It worked. It has worked ever since, but about 2 weeks ago it quit again. I thought surely someone can tell me what to do to fix it. I was right and you saved the day. Again, many thanks.

Unbelievable - I have purchased 3 new littemaids over the past couple of years because I assumed the motor quit. The 'quitting motor' thing seems to be a theme with the Littermaids. Well - SURPRISE - I had kept the Littermaid Mega I had just in case I have my friend's cats decide to visit. I just tried the 'reset' and the unit is working fine again. No more assuming the motors have quit for me

Nice... My LM quit about an hour ago. I was ready to go buy a new one while three cats were holding their desire to go. Check this website and this post just save me some bucks. It worked great.
My three cats say Thank you ... so do I.

Glad I could help! Interesting that in all the Littermaids that I have owned when i call to complain that they quit they never mentioned this before and instead just sent me a new box. Could have saved themselves money also!

Oh thank you so much for this information! My LM9250 just quit working a little over an hour ago and I was so mad as I just bought it less than two weeks ago. I read your post 5 minutes ago and it is working again!

I can't thank you enough

The author of the "Littermaid Repair Manual" lists that as the most common repair - those are switches that can corrode due to moisture and when you push on them several times it can make them work again. I recommend the book - lots of great info - the guy sells it on ebay.

Wish it had worked on my old one. The new one (which is working well so far *crosses fingers*) is the foot-pedal model.

Mare

Thank You for this information. I bought a littermaid yesterday and it didn't work and I couldn't get ahold of their customer service but since they were less than helpful with my previous littermaid (It had broken wiring) I wasn't expecting much. I stumbled across your post and in just a few seconds my new litter maid works perfect. Thank You!

Hey! Okay so I have 2 cats, and I have owned two seperate litermaid litter boxes. The first one, purcahsed and used over 3 years ago, mysteriously broke one day... just quit working. I accused one of my cats of breaking it (he is kinda talented like that- seriously he fetches bottle caps, drinks from the toilet, loves the water that remains in the shower once you get out, and drinks from the water faucet if you let him). He always pawed at the track and fought with it when it scooped. Well, I gave up after that and unfortuantely went back to a reguale box b/c I thought HE broke it. I eventually had to give my cats over to my dad to keep them for me when I went off to school. Dad demanded and autopmatic box SO I bought this one. I was so made when not 2 months later it broke. I was looking for customer service's number when I found this blog. AND what do you know... IT REALLY WORKED!! I was so happy. and I have to say, I think my cats were too!! So the mystery "reset" really does work. Try it before you do anything else. I just unplugged it and left it for a few minutes as I searched for the platic thing. I couldn't really figure out where it was at first BUT everything is great now!!
THANKS A BUNCH!

Oh my, seems we were not the only one to walk by and find that the cats were with crossed legs trying to figure out how to use the literbox. Seems that the scooper part was all the way forward, the lid was up on the waste part and we couldn't get the thing working. After getting on here and finding the RESET information the man in the family tried it, under the watchful eyes of both cats, and VOILA it began to work again!! THANK YOU FOR LETTING US KNOW THIS VERY IMPORTANT BIT OF INFORMATION... OTHELLO AND DESSI THANK YOU TOO!!!

Oh my GOSH!!!!! You have made me one happy camper! I really didn't want to deal with this, trying to fix it or buying new, etc. This VERY quickly solved my problem! Just FYI---my older model has only one clicker-thing on the left side. I just clicked it 7-8 times and voila! Thanks so much for sharing this info!

I spent a very interesting afternoon fooling with the white switches at the end of the tracks and I wanted to share my findings.

My littermaid mega (LM920V) hadn't been working in ages. The rake would not budge from the rest position in the rear of the unit. Power cycling the unit did not cause the rake to cycle. I was using the AC adapter and the red power light was on.

I had gone back to manual scooping while contemplating a new purchase when I stumbled on this wonderful site. Encouraged by the other resourceful people who have brought their littermaid back to life, I began fooling with the switches thinking they had become fouled. What was very frustrating, I was able to make the rake cycle once with my fooling, but after that one cycle, it refused to budge again.

My littermaid had two white toggle switches at the end of the track by the poo hopper. Facing the littermaid from the ramp side closest, the right switch with white and tan wires appeared to be working. At rest, the switch is in the closed state as verified by my ohmmeter. When the switch is toggled, the switch would open.

The switch on the left, with the white and red wires remained open despite my attempts to depress the white toggle.

Since the other switch appeared to be in the closed state at rest, I bypassed the left switch by shorting the circuit and power cycled the unit to see if it would work. Success! The unit appeared to work with only one switch. The rake would advance to the end of the track, hit the one switch on the right and return to it's resting position.

Encouraged by my findings, I cut the left switch out of the circuit and soldered the red and white leads together. Now the rake would cycle every time I powered off the unit. It was only after I soldered the wires and reassembled the unit when the thought occurred to me that there must be some purpose. Why else would it be there?

Thinking that I had just made more work for myself, I began testing if the rake would cycle if the beam was blocked. While I was waiting for the unit to cycle after breaking the beam, I removed the faulty switch and opened it to see what was causing the switch to fail.

The innards of the switch are quite simple. A metal bar is held against the two contacts by a spring. The toggle presses against the bar, compressing the spring, breaking the circuit against the contacts. The reason my switch was no longer working was due to sooty deposits on the contacts and on the bar presumably from sparking when the switch was opened during normal use. There was no corrosion that I could see.

I presume when the customer support person is telling you to press the toggle switches 7 or 8 times to "reset" the unit, the real purpose is to attempt to reestablish a circuit by disrupting any soot on the contacts. My attempts to "reset" were not successful.

Luckily, the unit continues to cycle from the eye. My littermaid is now fully functioning again.

However, this begs the question. Why did they include a switch that apparently is not necessary to the functioning of the unit? And the only purpose it seems to serve is to add another point of failure.

If anyone can shed light on why the switch was included or if by cutting my switch, I've created a dangerous situation, it would be much appreciated.

First, Thanks for the reset tip. Wonder why that is not in the friggin manual?

But does anyone know why the reset breaker gets triggered? Now that I can reset it, it still only works for a cycle or 2 before it needs another reset.

The battle continues. But there as at least hope. I noticed that there is a definite squeal when my LM rake is doing the return leg of the cycle, and then maybe will do one more before needing to be reset again.

Any thoughts appreciated.

Man, is it something I say? This is like the umpteenth forum where I post a question and the Forum Goes dead......

THANK YOU CLAVIN! IT WORKED! One of them was just "stuck". A little cleaning to unsitck and, boom, problem fixed.

This is my second littermaid in 5 years. I wish I had read about those reset toggles before I dumped my first one!