Hi all. Looking to add a Bond Bridge to control my two remote controlled fans. Plan is to use this with Home Assistant. I’d want to control the fans and also be able to determine their current states. In the bit of reading I did it seems like both of these are achievable.
I’m looking at the Home Assistant integration page and I’m seeing information about two different verisons of BB and want to make sure that both v1 and v2 work similarly?
I did see that v1 is slower at connecting on boot than v2 and that v2 can control more devices, but are there any other considerations? Can both accept current firmware upgrades? I am on a budget and do plan to buy a used unit so chances of that being a v1 is high.
Bond Bridges come in two hardware varieties, both of which can upgrade to various levels of v2 firmware / API (v3 is around the corner for, I assume, only the revised hardware version) that works with many platforms, including HA.
If buying used and you can confirm with the seller ahead of time: serials beginning with A or B are “Snowbird” / original hardware and have a sort of end of life status, with no future updates planned beyond where they are.
From personal experience, I have one of those on Beta firmware 2.29.2-1beta and works with all my Bond API integrations (which are not HA-based, to be clear, but rather ISY).
Serials starting with ZZ (“Zermatt” / revised hardware) are the future-proof ones. From personal experience, I have one of those on Beta firmware 2.29.7-beta; again, working with the Bond API to integrate.