I just realized that the ceiling fans in my house are compatible with Bond. I thought I’d post another set of experiences during their setup process. I got them all setup as smart devices (that part was magical; I’ve never updated firmware on a fan before).
Stuck in my old ways, I first went the bridge route where I tried to teach it all 12 buttons on my remote. That mostly worked, but I did encounter what appeared to be bugs.
I successfully taught it the commands for light toggle, off, speed 1-4, etc. However, once I got to speed 5, it popped up a list of remotes it thought I might have. This was unexpected to me since I was already most of the way through manually programming each command. I explored the 3 options and none matched (wrong name, different button set, wrong FCC IDs). Maybe that list could be further filtered based on which buttons were already added.
So I continued on with manual commands. From that point forward, none of the newly taught commands worked. I pressed speed 5 and it’d say something went wrong. I did this 4 times and had to back out of two screens in an attempt to try and add the other buttons.
After I saved the fan, all of the buttons pre-remote list popping up worked. All the ones after that point were unresponsive. Additionally, the UI showed duplicate buttons for every command I had tried again with (there were 5 speed 5 buttons). Speed 6 also didn’t work, but I never tried again so there was only one of those. I wasn’t able to remove them.
I also wasn’t able to edit the commands. Selecting that option brought me to a page with help text telling me to tap a button below, but there weren’t any buttons at all (maybe it can’t handle this weird state they were in with duplicates buttons?).
The same thing happened with a second ceiling fan. I got part way through, it randomly presented a list of remotes, then those buttons never worked right.
I was able to delete the fans and re-add as smart fans. The only minor problem with that flow is when it asks for the WiFi network password. It triggered Android’s password auto-fill feature (but it was trying to auto-fill my Bond app password; it didn’t know it wanted the WiFi password). I recommend turning off that feature for that view which I think can be done with android:importantForAutofill="no".
Other notes:
In bridge mode when you’re asked to keep pressing the button until the ring turns green, it would be helpful if that screen showed you the button icon. It’s easy to forget what you’re doing when each remote has so many buttons and you have multiple fans to setup.
After a firmware update, you’re sometimes asked to reconnect over BLE. It would be helpful if the Bond app reminded you of the device ID/serial number you were just working with (in my case, I had multiple fans on and waiting to be setup).