Guys, this is urgent and important. This must be addressed immediately. Your device is receiving commands from Google Home that aren’t being sent.
My lights are turning on at random times, sometimes in the middle of the night. This isn’t related to any rooms that are even occupied, no other device is sending the signal. The remotes reside in rooms no one is in. It’s happening at all times, day/night. I would be absolutely livid if my master bedroom light turned on at 3AM.
It is unclear who is at fault here, Bond or Google. However, I spoke with someone yesterday via phone support that suggested a Command was sent from Google Home. I was in the house with the only other person at home, sitting right next to me. We weren’t even talking when it occurred. Google Home never responded with any voice/noise notification that it had received a command. The light just turned on. Finally, there actually is no chance a command was sent from Google Home because I checked my Google Home history and no such even was logged. For the sake of science, I attempted to send a voice command to Bond Bridge via Google Home so I could see how long it took for the event to be logged in the history. I can confirm that it was immediately added to the log the moment I made the command.
This is a serious problem. This needs to be addressed now.
I know this would be incredibly frustrating. Some of us in the community had previously experienced a similar problem with Alexa and “hunches”; others had a similar problem with Alexa and/or Google Routines that weren’t even created intentionally or with memory of them being created.
See Fan Light turning on by itself.
There are a couple things that the Bond staff have pointed out when they’ve come through, and I’d like to check to see what details apply to your situation.
Do you use your original remote(s) in addition to the Bond app and/or voice assistant (Google or otherwise) commands to Bond?
If so, that complicates possible solutions, and might be worth considering.
If not, have you tried toggling On the Trust State in the Bond app for the lights?
Can you actively go through and review any of your assistants ( I know you only mentioned Google but if you once used Alexa then that too) and make sure no hunches or routines or groups include the lights in question? Even if you already are fairly confident you don’t remember setting any such up that way?
Thank you for your reply. I just set this up less than 72 hours ago, I am confident it is not part of an routine. I have created routines some time ago and have not modified them for a very long period of time.
Further, I enabled the Trust State functionality. I have two pieces of commentary there. I am not convinced the Trust State is monitoring the FAN and LIGHT separately, if not just because there is no separation in the app to differentiate. If I am correct, this needs to be added. The fan control include controls for the lights, and one can be turned on without the other, the trust state needs to be monitored seperately.
Second, and more importantly, I just had this happen again less than 15 mins ago (11:19 PM CST). Once again, no commands were issues, Google Home didn’t respond, no activity in the Google Home Activity. The Bond Bridge, however, failed to correctly identify the state of the light. I attempted to turn off the light with the Google Home command “Turn off living room light” but it didn’t occur (3 times). This is likely because the Trust State was already off, so Bond Bridge didn’t push the command. On a hunch, I issued the “turn on living room fan”. The fan turned off.
There is clearly an issue and I am not convinced it isn’t Bond Bridge’s implementation of 3rd party integrations. That is nearly the only reason to purchase Bond Bridge for anything that isn’t a Shade and it effectively ruins it’s functionality.
Not only is the Bond Bridge sending commands at odd times, it isn’t even tracking the Trust State when it does it. This is useful information for your techs. As an engineer myself, I am confident this information will be helpful
If there is anything I can provide to get to the bottom of this, please reach out. I want this fixed sooner rather than later.
The Bond team has explained to us that the Light state is the only thing that is tracked when Trust State is enabled, and Fan power state is not tracked. Some of us (myself included) have asked the Bond team to consider tracking Fan power state too, but at this time it hasn’t been implemented natively in Bond. Many of us in the community supplement what Bond has by integrating with our third-party smart home controllers (via Bond’s Local API) for more nuanced control and interoperability.
I do not believe I saw an answer to whether or not you’re still using the original remote in addition to Bond? Also applies to if you’re turning on / off the power at a wall switch.
Trust State is useful if and only if you keep power from the wall switch on all the time and exclusively use Bond to issue all commands of On or Off; it cannot “listen” continuously and know when you’ve pressed the original remote button and which one it was and keep track of that; it only tracks commands it itself sent (through the app and/or through a voice assistant).
Furthermore, if your original remote doesn’t have separate Fan On and Fan Off, or Light On and Light Off buttons, but instead has the Fan Power Toggle and Light Power Toggle that most seem to have, then Trust State attempts to fake a discrete On and Off for the Light kit part of the fan by tracking what command the Bond Bridge itself last sent.
Any time you ask Bond to send a Fan Power On or Off command, it will send the Fan Power Toggle command (assuming that the original remote only had a Power Toggle for Fan, not separate buttons for Fan On and Fan Off).
If you disconnected Bond, for a day or two, from Google Home, and only used the Bond app (again, not using the original remote either) you could verify the assumptions that it is indeed something in Google Home and/or the integration of Bond ↔ Google Home — assuming that no phantom command behaviors were identified.
Seems the most likely since so many of us in the community would understandably also be up in arms if this was a common issue.
I’ll ask a couple more questions so that whenever the Bond staff get a chance to come through here they have a better picture to start assessing, but they may want your permission to dig through logs, given your full serial.
Are you attempting to use your original remote and/or the wall switch in addition to Bond issuing commands (either in the app or through a Bond-integrated voice assistant)?
What are the first two characters of your Bond Bridge serial?
What firmware number, and which firmware channel (beta or stable) is on your Bridge?
For the fans’ lights that are behaving in a way you don’t expect, do you have a Template that was assigned during setup after pressing one or two buttons, or did you have to manually record each and every button of the original remote into Bond?
Check under a Fan device’s Settings → Advanced, for a Template, and denote which (if any) were assigned.
I’ll tag a Bond staff member to help bring their attention to this thread the next time they’re visiting: @endy - do you or someone on the Bond team have an opportunity to help review the activity of @InoSiX 's Bridge, if you were to connect via direct messages to get the full serial and permission, to see if the commands the Bridge is sending are originating from itself, or a third-party (Google Assistant or otherwise) integration request? I don’t see that we ever got back the “History” tracking in the Bond app.
Thanks for your reply. I need to correct myself from the last post regarding the trust state. The LIGHT turned on on it’s own. I checked the Google Activity History and saw nothing was sent. I tried to sent 3 OFF commands via voice assistant, none of them worked. I then tried one LIGHT ON command (not FAN like I originally said). This turned off the light. This is because the command was sent in a way that didn’t pass through the TRUSTED STATE mechanism. You might point to the remotes, but no one was even in the room it occurred in. Further, I bet if the team looked into the command history, they will find they received a command from Google Home at the timestamp I provided, even though it doesn’t show in my Google Home history.
I am stressing that the team looks into an mechanism that allows a command to be sent that doesn’t have the TRUSTED STATE function built into it. I suspect that is where you will find your culprit. I assume the TRUSTED STATE function by Bond Bridge remember the last command it sent and also monitoring for commands from external sources (such as the original remote) and changing the TRUSTED STATE accordingly. The fact that this state was not properly updated in Bond means that whatever mechanism triggered it didn’t have TRUST STATE as part of it’s consideration or otherwise didn’t submit a TRUSTED STATE SIGNAL.
I am occasionally using the remote in addition to using voice commands. The switch can only supply power and otherwise has no command ability (it’s not RF, it’s a standard switch. The fan is also a single 120VAC fan, so there is only 1 set of wires for both the FAN and the LIGHT).
The first 2 characters of the S/N are ZZ.
Firmware: RCF98v2. It is worth noting, after initial firmware update when I set the device up. I was later offered a firmware update that was seemingly lower than the version I already had. At the moment, it says “Update Available” with CURRENT VERSION: 3.14.1 and LATEST VERSION: 3.12.7-beta. I don’t release software in a way that requires I keep track of version history like this, but this seems like I would be going backward.
The first remote I did I set up manually. The second remote I did was immediately recognized by Bond Bridge. The FCC ID is: CHQ7225T. I have a total of 7 fans with the exact same FCC ID. After the first, all other ones were recognized by Bond Bridge by their FCC ID. I went back and deleted the first one (the one I did manually) and tried again. It too was recognized by the FCC ID. There is no commonality between the fans doing this, thus far it’s 5 out of the 7 fans I have that have done this.
Finally, it’s really obvious that the fan trust state should be added. This is truly basic functionality. I originally wanted to go this route (wireless fan with Bond Bridge) so I could eliminate the annoyance I have when I realize I have left fans/lights on all day. Wasted power with literally no benefit. I am honestly annoyed this even needs to be done at all. I don’t understand why there is no discrete ON/OFF for their LIGHT or FAN. They do, however, have discrete commands for fan direction. After doing more research, it appears this is very common with RF connected fans/light. Truly stupid.
As I have tried to mention but perhaps failed to make clear: you absolutely CANNOT use the original remote and expect the Bond to know of it. It does NOT “listen” in the background for OEM remote signals. Not for Lights, not for Fans - so original remote signals cannot update the Trust State. It is frozen at whatever the Bond Bridge last sent / knew itself to have sent.
That’s why I, and others in the community, do use the Track State feature but put original remotes in a drawer and never use them. We then turn to Home Assistant, ISY, SmartThings, HomeSeer, etc to integrate NEW remotes / keypads (Z-Wave, Insteon, Zigbee, Logitech Harmony, etc) to control exclusively through Bond API links for any physical buttons desired. This also allows for Bond-linked voice assistants to stay in sync. Recently, the Bond team even created a new product line (Bond Bridge Pro + Sidekick Scene remotes) to have more physical control options.
Alternatively, if you toggle off the Trust State feature, your Bond Bridge will only ever send Light Power Toggle commands whenever it is requested to be either turned On or Off (the same as will always be the case with Fan Power, since Fan Power is not a part of Trust State no matter if it is enabled or not).
This is acceptable to some folks as they only ever voice command Lights or Fans in rooms they are occupying, and no other devices / groups in that room (unless explicitly by name), so they’d know to say Turn Light / Fan On / Off by nature of it being the opposite of what they can perceive to be the current state.
To many others however, be they users of Routines or commands such as “turn all lights on/off” or "turn all ____ room lights on/off, are absolutely not okay with Bond not knowing the state a light was last in because if a Hue lamp bulb, for instance, was on while the Bond Bridge-linked ceiling fan light kit was off, a voice command to “turn off all living room lights” would turn off the Hue bulb and turn on the ceiling fan light kit.
This is indeed a very frustrating aspect of ceiling fan receivers by most manufacturers, and one which Bond can try (if you only ever use Bond and never the original remote) to circumvent, but cannot truly solve.
There are also ceiling fan manufacturers including a type of remote+receiver, or a very few aftermarket receiver / remote kits (only usable on AC motor fans, not DC motors), which license Smart by Bond integration — which bypasses the need for a Bond Bridge and lets that special kind of receiver directly connect to WiFi, use the Bond app and all the integrations / API options available to it, and give discrete Light Power On and Light Power Off commands, as well as Fan Power On and Fan Power Off.
One of the Bond staff mentioned some of this in this post.
This is super disappointing. Why wouldn’t it listen for commands in the exact same way it does to learn them? Adding receiving would be an expense, for sure, but the product already does that. Why wouldn’t it monitor the commands around it and behave accordingly?
I was disappointed the Sidekick buttons did not work with fans/lights. I realize it said “Shades” but figured it was targeting that market. You seem to be suggesting here Bond does have a product line to have physical buttons but I have not seen it on their website. Can you point me to it? I am new to this space. I really really desire physical buttons, especially the type that Bond can track. The more similar to standard physical rockers the better. Even more of a plus if they work even when internet is otherwise down.
If you get a Bridge Pro (not the same as the Bridge), you’re in luck!
The details take a little digging, but check this out: Usage note - a Sidekick, either Gen 1 or Gen 2, configured as a shade remote will only be able to control Shades. The Gen 1 Scene Keypad or Gen 2 Sidekick configured as a Scene keypad will be able control shades, lights, fans, generic and SBB devices that are in the Bond Home application. (link)
replacing the existing remote and receiver in each of your AC-motor fans with something that is either:
a) stateful RF (which would still use the Bond Bridge) See an option here - specifically I’m talking about the ‘OLD POST’ bit of that post.
or
b) Smart By Bond (bypassing the need for a Bond Bridge) See an option here (since the Home Depot one seems to be discontinued/ out of stock. Note that their Hampton Bay HubSpace one is not Smart by Bond)
finding OEM fans that come with a receiver that is:
a) stateful RF enabled (no specific links here, sorry) which you could use with your existing Bridge
b) made by partners / licensees of Bond and have integrated Smart by Bond into their devices out of the box (bypassing the need for the Bridge)? Post on the forum with some examples Listing of partners on main website, partway down the page
or are you talking about the third-party smart home controllers (Hubitat, HomeSeer, ISY, SmartThings, Home Assistant, etc) and integrating between Bond Bridge (regular or Pro, via API) and remotes / keypads that are compatible with those smart home controller ecosystems or plugins (the Z-Wave, Zigbee, Insteon, Logitech Harmony, etc)?
I am realizing that I’ve kind of diluted this thread primarily focus on the unrequested commands. ResidualImages, it’s clear you have a lot of knowledge about this subject and surely I am not the first to ask. Is there a sticky thread regarding compatibile options and their capabilities?
My primary goal right now is to have the unrequested commands to stop being sent. When I called Bond the other day, they told me they indeed received a notification for the device from Google Home, a request that I didn’t make, my Google Home didn’t responded to and did not show up in my Google Home activity.
Not per se. Just kinda scattered around; I’ve pulled the relevant links I could recall or search for into my responses above.
If you look around at posts I have made (maybe through glancing at my user page), I get pretty wordy and passionate about pros and cons of various scenarios and solutions. You’ll see me get repetitive about “throw OEM remote in a drawer”, likely.
This goes back to, if you want to troubleshoot, and potentially solve, the integration with Google Assistant I would recommend one (at a time) of the following options:
Disable the Bond integration with Google Assistant for one or two days to make sure it is the source of the issue. Leave Trust State enabled in Bond.
Use only the Bond app or the Bond app’s widgets, and do not use the original remote.
By nature you won’t be able to use Google Home app or voice Assistant, but it fully confirms that is indeed the issue.
When Support told you the behavior was (likely) due to a command from Google Home to Bond, I’m not exactly clear if that was a plausible assumption, or if they did get details and permission from you and actually reviewed your specific device logs?
I’m thinking some of the integrations don’t always show in Google History as discretely as we would hope, but I’m not set up in a way to really check that old gut check at the moment… Expected state: no issue, but degraded functionality since Google Home / Assistant isn’t available.
Keep (or Re-enable) Google Assistant integration active, and keep Trust State enabled in Bond. Use only Bond app, Bond app widgets, or Google Assistant (app and/or voice), and do not use the original remote. Expected state: no issues, unless something is at the edge of RF distance or there is some signal incompatibility despite the template found.
Keep (or Re-enable) Google Assistant integration active, but move all the fans (and their light kits) into one or more “fake” / virtual room(s) in Google Assistant/Home, where you have no other smart devices (other than Bond devices, if you only want one virtual room). Disable Trust State in Bond. Use Bond app, Bond app widgets, Google Assistant (app and/or voice), and even occasionally the original remote.
For any commands issued to a voice assistant, use the opposite of what you know to be true, and see what happens.
Then try voice commands to say the same as the current state - as in, fan or light are already on per what you can see physically in the room, but still saying “turn on fan [or light]”. Expected state: saying turn on or off for fan or light kit will always only send a power toggle to fan or light kit, always changing to the opposite of what is currently physically real, regardless of which word you said.
Isolating the Bond-controlled devices into “fake” rooms eliminates one variable, though doesn’t get rid of “whole home / all devices are targets” commands or schedules.
My best guess based on the years I’ve been on here and using Bond Bridges myself is that there is something about rooms or your home (meaning, in Google Home) attempting to ask Bond to do an On or Off as part of some group action that it is inadvertently sweeping up the Bond devices in it occasionally, and with the Trust State out of sync due to OEM remote occasional usage… You get Random Aggravating Behavior ™️.
I’ve never had, or heard here, of Google just asking Bond to do things without any reason.
The young lady I spoke with suggested disabling Bond like you mentioned. I haven’t given that a go. After she mentioned that, she said she saw that the request on her end. She also mentioned History used to be part of the Bond app, but was removed. She looked specifically at my a device as far as I understand it.
DM me the email address you use for the Google Home account and written permission to share that email and your Bond Home account data with the Google Home team for the purpose of resolving this issue.
I’m also glad to get on a call at your convenience to dig in, though I strongly encourage you to do the above first because I don’t have many options in this end. When we receive a command from Google for a linked account, we take action… not much we can do on our side other than remove the Google Home integration from your account. Anyways, here’s a link to find a time to speak with me. Glad to take your feedback on other aspects as well: https://meetings.hubspot.com/chris-merck
Lastly, regarding “track state / trust state”, this is a feature which honestly just doesn’t work well in the aggregate. A single missed signal or single use of the factory remote causes the Bridge’s belief to become inaccurate.
Regarding why we cannot listen for factory remote usage, it comes down to two issues: (1) the fact that the radio receive in Bond Bridge—though very flexible—can only be configured to listen to a single protocol and frequency at once. This means that theoretically we could listen for one remote control for your ceiling fan, but if the fan in the other room uses a different frequency/protocol (which is common even within a single fan brand), then we would only be able to listen to one of them. Then (2) the range on these remotes is not great. Often they just work within a single room. So receiving signals from across the house would be hit-or-miss. The Bridge uses something close to the legal limit transmit power, while many remotes are cost-engineered to be just powerful enough to work in the room. So we would miss signals. ---- In the future, SDR technology could allow a comprehensive solution to problem (1), but right now the CPU requirements make it impractical with a consumer (< $500) product.
BTW, checking your account at 11:11:39 PM CST, we saw a “Turn Light Off” intent from Google. Due to the toggle nature of the light commands on most ceiling fans (including yours), we can only change state, not set a specific state, so this will result in the light turning ON instead of OFF. Glad to do a screenshare and show everything we have… but ultimately will require an investigation on Google’s side.
Kind of hate to jump into the middle of this, but I’ve had a similar problem with a stand-alone light that will come on in the middle of the night. I verified that it’s not Alexa (the only smart assistant I have) by disconnecting it from Alexa, and verified that it is the Bond because if I delete it from the Bond completely, it doesn’t happen. A Bond support person suggested I reset the remote for the light, which I did, but which didn’t help. I didn’t have the Trust feature enabled, so I just did that and I’ll see what happens tonight. But I do think there is an issue with the Bond issuing a spurious command. Note that this only happens with this one particular light, not with all the ceiling fan/lights that I have.
Interesting! Sounds slightly different than the issue experienced by @InoSiX since the Bond team can see a command initiated from Google Home in their case.
But this sounds adjacent / of similar interest and aggravation.
Personal curiosity, since you said it is a stand alone light (not associated with a Fan from what I gather?): is this a Generic Device type you raw recorded each of the ?RF? signal buttons during setup? Or did you set it up as a Fan or a Fireplace type device?
I’m sure Chris Merck would like some date / timestamps if you roughly recall previous instances, or if you get new examples (with or without Trust State enabled).
Just a reminder: Trust State being enabled gets wonky if you mix original remote AND Bond / Alexa / Google Home (+ Assistant); really only is handy if you exclusively use Bond and its integration with Alexa / Google Home (+Assistant).
Yep, it’s a stand alone light (a Joly Joy LED Floor lamp, JH-FL0001) and I set it up by recording from the supplied remote. And after that I don’t use the remote at all. I’ll post here tomorrow about whether the lamp comes on during the night or not.
Interesting. I’d like to see logs for the time when the device turns on, so we can see where the request is coming from. It’s possible that it’s still coming from Alexa servers (and we are not getting the account un-linking correct). But it’s speculation until we can check specific logs.
OK, it was on this morning, so it turned on sometime between 9:00 pm and 5:30 am Phoenix time. I saw that in the Bond app, it thought it was off. I suspect that this is because when I learned the remote, the remote turned it off and then I turned it off with the Bond app. So I turned it on with the remote and then off with the Bond app, so now it shows as off (correctly). If it’s not on tomorrow, then I’m going to turn it on with Alexa and see what the status is on the Bond app.
