BOND Wifi Hotspot is still visible?

Would it also be possible to change the channel that the Bond Bridge AP defaults to? That way, even if the WiFi network does pop up, it will cause less interference.

Currently, the Bond Bridge defaults to WiFi channel 1+6 (40MHz mode), which causes an incredible amount of interference across more than 2/3rds 2.4 GHz spectrum. This also has a tendency to knock out nearby Zigbee devices, because Zigbee channel 11 (which is the default for most Zigbee devices) overlaps with WiFi channel 1.

I would highly recommend using WiFi channel 6 (20Mhz mode) or 11 (20MHz mode) instead. There’s no need to broadcast across 40MHz just for configuration purposes, and no need to default to a channel that has a high likelihood of interfering with Zigbee devices.

Edit: The Bond Bridge may actually be in violation of the IEEE 802.11-2012 specification by defaulting to 40MHz operation.

Thanks for the note. We’re using vendor defaults for the access point configuration. Strange that the setting is so suboptimal. I’ve added a backlog item for us to tweak the channel configuration as you’ve suggested. Currently targeting v2.18 beta release for early April.

Only if you connect to the AP and then transfer data. The Bond’s once-per-second beacon announcing the SSID shouldn’t cause much interference at all.

Actually, @Leapo , please let us know the first digit of the serial number of your unit. If you’ve got a “snowbird” (A/B) there’s very little we can do since it has an undocumented binary wifi driver (:angry:). But for “zermatt” and “smart by bond” fans (Z/K) we have nearly full-control because we build most of the Wi-Fi stack from source.

Only if you connect to the AP and then transfer data. The Bond’s once-per-second beacon announcing the SSID shouldn’t cause much interference at all.

Unfortunately, that does not appear to be the case. I have a Hue Hub (Zigbee) on the same shelf as the Bond Bridge, and as soon as the Bond enables its AP, all of the Hue bulbs start flapping between “Online” and “Unreachable” in the Hue app. While this is occurring, bulbs often fail to respond to commands.

As soon as the Bond Bridge stops broadcasting its AP, all Zigbee devices begin behaving normally again.

I will note that many WiFi chipsets will generate broad-spectrum noise, increasing the overall noise floor of the surrounding area, even when not actively transmitting data (Think of it like the hiss you hear when you turn up amplified speakers). This is especially true if the WiFi chipset’s transmit power is turned up too high (and a lack of cooling can exacerbate the issue).

So, in addition to switching to Channel 6 or 11, and switching to 20MHz mode, it might also be a good idea to dial down the transmit power to the minimum required for setup from a reasonable distance.

please let us know the first digit of the serial number of your unit. If you’ve got a “snowbird” (A/B) there’s very little we can do since it has an undocumented binary wifi driver (:angry:). But for “zermatt” and “smart by bond” fans (Z/K) we have nearly full-control because we build most of the Wi-Fi stack from source.

The first digit of my Bond’s serial number is a “Z”, so it looks like I’m good there! :slight_smile:

I’m seeing KNKSADE42149 and KNKSADE41945 both broadcasting the WIFI config after an extended internet outage yesterday. They didn’t reconnect automatically. These are the only two with older firmware that don’t have an update available yet so I assume the reconnect logic has already been fixed but isn’t available yet for these models.

cc @merck

You’re right, it’s not released yet to production.

However, you could use the beta firmware. Right now that requires installing the beta app. However, in next app update (v2.32.0), we will have a Firmware Channel feature where you can select BETA firmware even from the production app.

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Thanks. I updated to the beta firmware 2.18.8 from 2.15 successfully. The first attempt failed, but the second one went though. I think that was due to another bug that was fixed in the upgrade process that I just got unlikely and hit during the upgrade.

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Great. Do let me know if you see that AP pop up again. It should ONLY appear if you lose internet for more than 1 min. (And, it will require a PIN to be entered before allowing setup, to secure it.) EDIT: And it disappears 30 sec after internet comes back.

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Will do if it happens again :+1:

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UPDATE: We have a beta firmware v2.29.0-beta for ZZ, ZP, KNKSA, and KSM units (almost everything). This fixes a problem that many users where experiencing where the connection would be unstable and the AP SSID would broadcast continuously. We never did reproduce it at our desks, but we managed to work remotely with a few customers with the issue and confirmed the fix in alpha that way. So I’m fairly confident this will fix this issue.

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In case it helps, this just happened again after an internet outage.

I had quite a few devices from various vendors end up with a link local address 169.254.0.0/16 and needed a physical reboot to get them back on the network.

I’ll upgrade to 2.29.0 for the next time this happens

I’ve updated to of the “Home Depot” generic ones to v2.29.0. Both of them are online and controllable in the app and via Home Assistant on the LAN. Unfortunately they are also broadcasting the WiFi AP

I’ve also updated 4 of my progress lighting fans to v2.22.4 since v2.29.0 wasn’t available for these models. Two of them are now showing offline and not broadcasting WiFi either even after a power cycle.

:thinking: I guess we didn’t solve the failure mode your units are experiencing… pse DM me the Bond IDs for those “Home Depot” units that are still misbehaving. We’ll take a look at the logs and see if we can figure out why it continues to show the Config AP.

Re: Progress Lighting: OK, I just pushed out v2.29.0-beta firmware for these units (actually all KV… units).

I got one of the Progress Lighting ones updated to 2.29 successful.

The other one that was online gets stuck at 89% for a few minutes, then rebooting, then Communication error 107

When I got back into firmware update it shows again but stuck at 89%

Edit: after 3 tries on the iOS app, I tried the android app and it was able to get it updated

I’ll go try a rescue reset on the two that have been offline for a few days

OK, we’ve just sent out another beta (for all units), v2.29.2-beta. — Based on remote tests on 2 units, we show that this can fix the ongoing (or newly introduced) connectivity instability.

Unfortunately the “89%” firmware update bug is something we don’t yet have a fix for. (We find that sometimes exactly 11 bytes go missing from the firmware update download TCP stream, and so then it never completes because the bond is waiting for those 11 bytes.) — All I can say right now is, retrying several times in a row normally makes it go through.

2.29.2 beta firmware has been stable and appears to resolve the issue. Nice work :+1:

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@dxdc any chance you could try the latest Beta firmware and see if it resolves the original issue? :crossed_fingers:

Just had an internet outage again, the hot spot appeared during the outage, but quickly went away once the internet was restored.

Thanks @merck! I installed the new firmware. Outages happen extremely rarely but will try to check it out next time it does.

I upgraded to 2.29.2 beta firmware and the hotspot issue is now gone. I have a AJ model. However my ceiling fans are now noticeably slower to change speed, turn on, off etc. I also use my hub with Somfy shades and they are still very quick it was just the ceiling fans that are now slower. Any ideas @merck?

btw, @merck can you please provide the command either in curl or bond-cli to rollback to master / stable release for the AJ model? Just in case the slowness gets too annoying.