I have a Bella Depot ceiling fan that doesn’t have dimmer functionality on the remote. It does have:
Is it possible to add a dimming function through the Bond Bridge? When adding the remote, I had to program in each button, so it doesn’t look like the remote was recognized as belonging to any particular remote profile.
Thanks in advance.
Welcome, @mdarnold !
If the original / OEM remote does not support dimming, then likely the wiring in the light kit does not support dimming – and in any case, if the original / OEM remote does not support dimming, it is 99.9% likely the RF receiver in the ceiling wouldn’t know how to handle a dimming command.
I know that some folks, myself included, have found over the years (even before Bond) that some additional IR commands for things like a TV were stored in and able to be handled by the TV, even if the original remote didn’t have a button for it.
As far as RF ceiling fans, I have yet to find any such examples of a parallel – likewise for others in the community, and the Bond staff have not said otherwise. This is why I’ve said the below, in summary:
I’m a bit confused. I have a fan that is not recognized in the database so had to program the buttons manually. I got everything on the remote to work (light on/off and 6 fan speeds with direction change) but the remote has a dim and bright function that gives about 6 steps up/down, 1 step per button push. Yet I am not presented with a button to program for dimming and brightening. Is there a way around this with the Bond Bridge? Not sure why it would be difficult for Bond to add functionality they already support to the collection of programmable functions presented when manually programming…
Welcome!
Sounds like you’re in the opposite case scenario as the original poster.
They didn’t have dimming on their original remote and wanted to add via Bond, if possible - but it isn’t.
You want to replicate dimming which is on your original remote, but having trouble figuring out how to manually do so in Bond since your remote wasn’t automatically recognized.
The brighten and dim features are kind of weird, and the Bond team has explained it before as something best suited for templated / recognized devices due to press and hold delays vs press and release, etc. Too much variation. So, unfortunately, there aren’t “Dim” / “Brighten” labeled buttons directly available when manually recording signals.
But you can record your presses of the Light Level Up and Light Level Down buttons as any available command!
Since you’ve already got the fan and basic light working, I’d maybe suggest doing testing by adding a new Device in the Bond app (that way you don’t “mess with” what is working so far).
Maybe choose a device type of Light → Other?
Then manually record Light Level Up as Light ON and Light Level Down as Light OFF.
(While we’re discussing that, sometimes I try to add fresh devices in Bond again later with the same or different button presses as I originally used, to see if any new templates or differences in “first button searched” leads to a templated / recognized device - but without jeopardizing what I’ve already recorded.)
Note that after you add the Light and see if it does what you want it to do, there are ways to update, via Bond’s API / command line on a computer on the same network, the text of the buttons as they display in the Bond app.
If you want the new buttons all in one device, once you confirm this new Light Device strategy can work, you could do the same steps to add two new buttons (choose two out of whatever random ones aren’t used yet, maybe Summer and Winter from the fan section), and rename them as Light Up and Light Down.
Now, if all that sounds like a little extra legwork, yep, I can agree it is. However, at least with what the Bond team has given us, we can do funky things like this - and much more!