How does the Circle Pad Pro work?

I am trying to use the Circle Pad Pro, and while it worked for a while (and was pretty awesome), all of a sudden it isn't working anymore.

I am not sure how the thing works, so I don't have any idea what to do to try to get it to work again.

How does the Circle Pad Pro work? How does it know when it should interact with the 3DS? Would removing it when the 3DS is sleeping or paused cause it to stop working?

Also, do I have to have certain settings in game? (Such as setting move to the ABXY buttons to use the right circle pad (on the Pro) rather than the left one.)

Solution 1:

It works when you hold down L+R+X while paused. If it doesn't calibrate, the batteries are dead.

Solution 2:

If you store the Circle Pad Pro in a way that causes one of the buttons to be held down (most likely the shoulder buttons), it will drain the battery.

The device does transmit IR, and it "wakes up" at the response of a button press. The system seems to transmit IR intermittently to tell the 3DS that it is there. After some time, this "keep alive" signal stops because the CPP went to sleep.

Every time you press a button, the IR signal lights up, the sleep timer resets, and it keeps going.