Bond Home - Initial Thoughts

Hardware
1

Hey everybody!

I just got my Bond Home that I purchased on sale for $80 this past weekend. I’ve only had it for a little bit, but I’ve gotta say that I really like the potential of this product!

The good:

I have 5 ceiling fan/light combos that are spread out across my 1500 sq. ft house. All have remotes that run somewhere in the 300mhz range. I was able to centrally locate the Bond and control all of them with no problems at all! IFTTT is supported, so I am able to get some level of integration into HASS, even if it isn’t native. As a bonus, I was able to add a cheap 413mhz outlet as a device and control that as well. Since it is a fan that is plugged into the outlet, all I had to do was manually set up a new device and program the on and off functions.
The setup process is pretty simple as well. All I had to do was add a new device, program any one button on the remote, and it automatically found the rest of the functions. The app is pretty easy to understand, even if it does feel rough around the edges at times.

The bad:

As I said, the app has its rough spots. For instance, after I am done adding a device, if I go back to the main screen where I can select which device I want to control, it loses connection to the Bond until I restart the app. Also, when setting up the device it would not allow me to enter a hidden SSID network. I had to unhide my 2.4ghz wifi so that I could connect to it. Weirdly enough, after I connected it to the network, I rehid the SSID and it wouldn’t connect to it. I’m not sure what the issue is, but my 2.4ghz is normally hidden as it is only used for home automation devices. I will submit a bug report to Bond and see if I can get a resolution.
IFTTT support seems to work fine, but there is enough lag that it gets noticeable. Another limitation with IFTTT is that for some reason you are only able to turn devices on or off through the Bond action in IFTTT. So I am not able to change the speed of my ceiling fans through IFTTT/HASS, but only through the app. I worked around that by setting up a separate device with the Bond that has my fan’s HIGH command mapped to the on button and the LOW command mapped to the off button. It’s a hacky workaround, but it gets the job done.

In conclusion:

The Bond has a lot of potential. They say they are working on SmartThings integration, which would make it much simpler to integrate into HASS. I’m sure the app will improve, and they also say they are going to be adding new types of devices that you control with it. At this time the only supported device types are ceiling fans and air conditioners. The whole-house coverage is awesome, and at $80 to automate 5 fans and an outlet, this thing is a steal! There doesn’t seem to be anything else like it on the market at the moment, so I am pleasantly surprised by how it is performing at such a low price.

Let me know if you have any questions about this device. I would be happy to answer! Thanks for reading!

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This looks interesting. I’ve struggled to control my Hampton Bay fan because it runs on 305mhz, making it incompatible with Broadlink and other 315/433mhz options. My fan also has two dimmable lights (upper & lower). Would this allow some control over them as well through IFTTT?

1 Like
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You said that you worked around the fan speed issue by setting up a separate device for the fan’s high speed - but that would make 7 devices, right? The info on the Bond website (as well as Amazon) says that it only supports six devices.
Do any of your fans have dimmable lights? If so, are you able to use the dimming via the Bond app?

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There is no dimming control through IFTTT as far as I can tell. Through IFTTT you can turn the fan/light on and off and that’s it.

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You are correct about the device limit. I unlinked one of my fans that I didn’t need to control in HASS (in my sister’s room, who couldn’t care less about home automation). I haven’t been able to get dimming to work correctly with the Bond app either. All of my fans have dimmers where you have to hold the light on/off button to cycle through different brightnesses. It recognizes that there should be some type of dimming function and gives me extra buttons in the app for it, but the buttons don’t do anything other than turn the light on and off.

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Any update on this? I got the broadlink and it doesn’t control one of my fans. :frowning: I’m hoping this Bond fixes that.

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Strange… I’m using hunter fans, and it controls the dimming through those two extra buttons (my remote is like yours, the light button doing both on/off and cycling through dimming… and both buttons on bond app - do the same thing… so they only need to add one button, but it works. So ifttt works well with bond? I was trying to find a way to get this integrated with home assistant… hopefully something comes up…

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I couldn’t get IFTTT to work at all, however Alexa works great!