A few questions for a potential purchaser

BOND Setup and Hardware
1

Hello. Looking to buy a bond but have a few questions:

  1. None of my remotes are showing in the database (well, one is but the buttons don’t match??) One is IR and 2 are RF. Are all of the commands able to be learned from the remotes or are there limitations (if so, what are they?)
  2. One of the remotes requires a simultaneous button press of 2 buttons to send the code to the receiver module. Can you do simultaneous button presses in the Bond app or does the bridge learn the remote’s connection and this would not be necessary to do within the Bond app?
  3. IR emitter - what is the setup of the IR emitter? I’m thinking about putting the bridge on top of a dresser but the fan is pretty high up - maybe 10 feet. Is there enough of a spread on the IR emitter to shoot that high?

Thank you!

2

Welcome!

  1. Mostly, yes. There are a couple encryptions / protocols that are not supported but they are fairly rare. If you have specific remote FCC IDs, that can usually help determine.
    In some cases, Bond staff will work with you to test new remotes if you are having trouble “raw recording” / manually building a remote (through their official support channels, or occasionally on here).
    Please note the supported RF ranges (no GHz, for instance):
    New revision Bond Bridges (serials beginning with ZZ): 285.5 - 505.5 MHz
    Original revision Bond Bridges: 300 - 450 MHz

  2. Not sure exactly. If pressing the 2 buttons simultaneously sends a discretely different signal, then recording it as a single button on the Bond Bridge makes sense. If it is somehow sending the codes of each button alternating even though you’re pressing simultaneously, then that’s likely to be more interesting to get the Bond Bridge to emulate via a single command.

  3. I believe this will be fine, based on limited testing (I don’t have many IR devices I’ve tested with the Bond Bridge).

Anyone else, feel free to chime in with your own views.

3

Thanks much. I actually gave the FCC IDs to someone at Bond on a chat session today and no bueno.

The two button press is to ‘sync’ the remote to the fan so I’m thinking that the matching is done via the remote and hopefully will be passed through to the Bond bridge (seems like that’s what happens with same remote with different dip switch settings from what I’ve been able to find out).

Thanks again for your help!

4

Yeah, I’d guess that’s right. It probably just has an internal address that’s paired with the double button press.

There are 5 IR emitters in a ring around the outer part of the Bond Bridge, pointing away from the center and up off the plane at around 45 degrees. I’d guess 10 feet would be fine, but you might need to adjust the position of the Bond a bit, or rotate it, if the receiver is in a region that’s not very well-covered.

5

Great - thank you. Getting the unit tomorrow.

Since none of the remotes are in your database, is there a support line I can call if I get stuck on something? I’m pretty tach savvy but am expecting to have some bumps with the remote learning process.

Thanks again! Hoping the Bond is just what the doctor ordered!

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6

Ok, just set up the bridge and programmed the remotes. One was a lot more difficult due to the remote setup but I figured it out.
Quick question

The serial number on my bridge starts with BD. I am seeing the some things in this forum referring to a newer unit with serial numbers starting with a Z. Is this an issue? Is there a reason I should have a newer bridge? I am integrating with Control4 so I have to swap this one fast and set everything up again if that’s the case

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7

The feature parity is pretty close between the 2. If it’s working for you as-is, it shouldn’t be a problem to stay with the BD.

Because you’re tech savvy, if there is ever a need to replace your BD device, there are also ways to replicate the setup via command line API between devices - and I think some of the Bond staff may also have ways to copy / push various setups.

@jacob - you have a backlog of remotes still? Seems like our new friend has some unique ones which might be nice to have in the database.

8

Thanks for all of the help!
Yes, I have 3 remotes - 2 of them are not in the database but I was able to get them working by choosing a few of the sample templates and working with those. The other one has some odd programming where you have to select the fan speed by cycling through multiple button presses and hit ‘select’ buttons and some other weirdness. I really wanted to just have 3 speed setting so integration was easier for the programmers working on my system so I figured out how to ‘trick’ the remote to send the signal for the speeds I wanted. Took a bit of doing - glad there might be an option to copy over the programming, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to figure that out again ;o)

Here are the remotes if it helps: IR remote: Savoy House CHQ8BT7053T
RF remotes: Emerson - F92sr330
Emerson - chq8bt7030t

Again, thanks for the help - much appreciated!

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