Fan Direction changing despite always being set to reverse

Integrations
1

Hi guys,

I have used Bond Bridge for a while to control a Hayes “dumb” ceiling fan. This setup is Bond Bridge > Home Assistant > Apple Homekit.

In the Bond App I have the ceiling fan set to reverse and state tracking set to “On”. In Home Assistant I have it also set to reverse. Finally, in Apple Home App i have it set to reverse in all scenes.

I never use the fan remote to control any of the fans.

However, recently when changing scenes via Apple Home App, the fan direction seems to change. Let’s assume the following…

  • Fan is stopped
  • “Good Morning” scene is activated which sets fan speed to 6 and direction to reverse. Fan is observed to be running in reverse.
  • “Good Evening” scene is activated which which sets fan speed to 4 and direction is set in Home App to reverse. As such, the fan should just continue spinning in the same direction it was, but reduce speed down to 4.

That isn’t the case. The fan direction is changed when the new scene is activated. However, Bond, HA, Apple Home show the fan direction as being in reverse when it is in fact now spinning forward.

What is strange is that I have two Bond Bridge’s in separate rooms which use the same scenes. The issue above is for the Desk Area Ceiling fan, but the Bedroom Ceiling Fan doesn’t have the same problem. However, I have come to think that this may be because the Bedroom Ceiling Fan speed is never changed to anything other than 6. It would appear to me that changing the speed of the fan between scenes is causing the direction toggle to be sent. If the fans are turned off, and then turned on via a scene (as opposed to running and a scene changing the speed) then the direction always “starts” correctly as reversed.

I can see in the Bond App logs that fan speed and direction are being set. On both fans, but only the Desk Area Ceiling fan is changing direction.

My remote has “Toggle” for fan direction. Both ceiling fans and remotes are exactly the same models. As stated before. I never use the remote to control the fans so there should not be any state confusion.

It is driving my crazy as I cannot work out why this is happening.

Is there a way to stop bond sending a direction signal at all? These fans seem to “recall” the last direction when the speed is set. If I can stop Apple Home > HA > Bond Bridge sending a fan direction command at all, then I would probably get the issue solved.

I have no need to ever have the fan spinning forward, it should always be in reverse (counter-clockwise).

Any ideas are much appreciated, thank you.

2

I have several fans with the same remote toggle control for spin direction. In my routines in alexa I never program the toggle function and the fan stays consistently in the spin condition when I switch spin speeds based on room temperature conditions which is analog to your morning verses evening scene change. In my case things happen in real time dependent how the incoming sun and AC modulate the actual temperature. So in my case I never submit in that scene a directional signal which keeps the fans in same run orientation. Adding the toggle switch command would in my case switch the rotational direction anytime my temperature change initiates a spin speed adjust. Is your program including always the toggle spin directional instruction even though it isn’t needed since you want to keep consistent rotation?

3

Thanks for the reply, @Joachim47 - much appreciated.

Unfortunately I can’t seem to disable the fan direction from Apple Home App. It would seem that it is always passed as a value from Apple Home > Home Assistant > Bond Bridge API.

This is the Home Assistant Integration I am using - Bond - Home Assistant - so I wonder if anyone else in this forum who is more knowledgable about HA is able to chime in about disabling the fan direction so it is not passed to Apple Home?

Or if there is even a way to disable the fan direction in Bond so that HA doesn’t even “know” that fan direction is an available option?

4

You can also try going to Device > Settings > Advanced > Edit Commands, and delete the “Reverse”, “Summer”, and “Winter” commands. This will cause the Direction feature to be disabled and render the Bridge incapable of sending any direction toggle.

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5

In my Alexa fan call the options are right there

Screenshot_20241010-075656
Screenshot_20241010-0756561080×2400 67.8 KB

It is not clear to me why HA doesn’t provide the same functionality to control the commands used in the fan call

6

Thanks @merck - I have deleted that command and I shall test everything throughout the day tomorrow and come back to report if all is now working as expected.

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7

The solution of deleting the direction control seemed to have worked perfectly :slight_smile:

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