Beam IR sensor stops working

CEC is great for watching TV but the Beam was bought for a kitchen for music steaming when TV isn’t turned on. It’s just much easier to have the Sky remote handy on the bench for volume adjustments instead of having to access your phone to adjust volume. 
 

So you use the remote especially to turn the volume down when not watching TV but when you are enjoying music from Sonos sources?Would voice commands not work for this?

Yeah I do use Alexa quite a bit for starting streaming (mainly playing radio stations) and voice recognition and speed of response is great however volume increments are a little clunky. I said the other day “Alexa volume up” and it jumped pretty much to full volume. I nearly 💩. Plus I’m trying to keep things easy for the missus and the kids with one control. 

Admittedly, I use both CEC and IR too, as I like to use the TV remote aswell to adjust the speaker volume when playing music, but also use Alexa aswell. I have several remotes programmed with the same IR code and they are just handy to pickup and use. 
 

I tried a different (Sony TV) IR code on one of my cable box ‘remotes’ this morning and in my case despite it not being the correct code for my OLED LG TV, it still works in my case and it even powers the TV off/on and adjusts the volume - so that still maybe worth a try here, I think. It’s just that HDMI-CEC needs to be on, on all devices including the connected Sky Box to control the TV… Nothing ventured, nothing gained, as they say.

@Mark Huddleston Alexa is a computer. The command “Volume up” let’s the computer make the choice by how much. “Volume up by 20%” or “Volume to 20%” let’s you make the choice….

Yeah HDMI CEC is just too convenient to turn off. It’s just frustrating that the IR sensor works perfectly and then just stops working randomly. It wouldn’t matter if I programmed other remotes it’s the beam that doesn’t receive IR commands. 
I might try a small piece of tape over the IR sensor. That’s all I’ve got left to try to be honest. Hopefully this will stop any excess IR interference and stop confusing the Beam (if that’s really the cause!) 

If your pad/phone camera is sensitive to IR, you can verify that your remote emits IR.

Could you enlighten me on this please? 

Attempt to take a picture of the remote’s emitter while emitting a command. While previewing the image you may see a faint flashing. First you need to verify that you can see some flashing using a remote that you are certain is emitting IR. An older CD or DVD player remote would be a good test candidate. Modern TV and cable box remotes might use Bluetooth to communicate with their box. Another way to prove that IR is being used would be to physically block IR transmission. If commands are no longer executed, then you know that IR is being used.

UPDATE. Power cycled the Beam and Sky remote working via IR for music streaming volume and HDMI CEC for TV volume. I’ve put a strip of sellotape over the Beam’s IR sensor to reduce any sensitivity/interference.  So far so good. Working perfectly. It looks crude but could be made neater if it works long term.