I know this makes no sense but after years of replacing receivers I’m 99% sure it’s somehow caused by the bond device.
We have six matching fans 5 of which are controlled by Alexa through bond one that is controlled by a light switch and the remote. The receivers on the 5 bond Controlled units die every three to six months. The sixth unit has never had a problem in 4 years.
I found out recently that the smart speaker in my wife’s office had died almost a year ago and she has just been using the remote. The fan in her office has not been replaced in over a year.
Any ideas why the bond device would damage DC remote receivers?
That’s an interesting predicament. I’m going to do one assumption off the bat, but please correct me if I’m wrong. I assume that by “Bond”, you mean a single Bond Bridge and that each of the fans’ receivers are either the original OEM one / a 1:1 replacement, or a universal receiver which is built for DC motor fans (most universal receivers I see are only for AC motors). I assume you do NOT mean each fan has a Smart By Bond (SBB) receiver which works independently of a Bond Bridge.
Given that assumption, and while I remind everyone I’m not a Bond staff member, nor am I licensed electrician… it still almost sounds like you have electrical issues on at least some circuits if factory / replacement RF receivers AND a smart speaker just … die for no apparent reason.
The Bond Bridge just* replicates the RF (or IR) signal of the original device remote.
I put the * there because I suppose from what I think I understand about devices which were not auto-recognized and assigned a Template after pressing one or two buttons when setting a new remote up in the Bond app… Those “raw-recorded” devices would just have a window of time across a seen RF frequency - technically there could be some “noise” in that recorded signal depending on your RF environment.
Of these 6 devices, are all assigned a Template in the Bond app (seen under each Device, Settings, expand the Advanced arrow)?
Or do any of them not have a Template showing?
If any are different, do they correlate directly or inversely to which receivers keep dying?
Even if there was RF noise in your environment, though, two things come to mind.
- that noise may be there nearly all the time, or at least intermittently, even without a Bond Bridge
- the receivers in the fans should be ignoring noise - so unless you see “phantom” / undesired actions whenever pressing either the physical remote buttons or the Bond app / voice assistant commands, this probably doesn’t even matter.
I’ve had extremely good luck with Bond Bridges across AC and DC motor fans – but I know saying “it hasn’t happened to me” doesn’t exactly help your troubleshooting.
Will you list out the 6 fans (make / model - though you indicated they’re all the same?), their current (and past, if you know and they’re different) receiver/remote FCC IDs, and whether or not they have required replacement or if they are still on their first receiver?
Hi Joe, I just want to add that indeed I don’t see how Bond could cause your receivers to fail sooner. Bond only sends signals when you request them (either via the app, schedules, integrations, or API).
The one way I could see that Bond could “cause” the receivers to fail early would be if you had a script that sent an API command every few minutes rather than only sending on change. This applies only to API use and advanced integrations… I’m not talking about casual Alexa use. – Anyways, sending API commands in a tight loop is definitely not recommended. The receiver stores the fan’s state in non-volatile memory which has a finite write-erase cycle limit. A naive implementation on inexpensive EEPROM could have as few as 10k cycles which would wear out after only 6/mo of sending every 30 minutes. However, the receivers could be engineered to handle many more cycles than that via wear leveling (what we do in Smart by Bond receivers).
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Another mode I using for my DC fan in the living room is a tight temperature control in the summer starting the fan and changing based temperature speed up/down or off process which during the day triggers many control changes on the fan over several hours. Since I spend most of the day in that area, I haven’t bothered to check on my presence to reduce the fan activity. The routines keep the area much more comfortable under the AZ conditions complementing the recently upgraded multi-zone HVAC system in the home. Same concept I am using in the master bedroom at night with an equivalent fan setup.
Is this something that could be caused by Alexa routines? I have routines set up to shut the fans off twice a day.
Yes single Bond Bridge yes oem recievers I have also never found a third party DC replacement. I once tried a similar model from another fan by the same company and it worked but not as designed.
They all have separate entries but the same template assigned
I do have a couple other fans with what appear to be much higher end receivers and they have never had the slightest issue. These ninja fans receivers seem like cheap Chinese junk to me.
They are Ninja by Tropos Air I cant find an fcc id anywhere on them just a sticket with a model number DC8- 56DF JF-L-2
Which template is it?
Twice a day doesn’t seem to approach the frequency that @merck mentioned as a possible issue.