Hi,
I have a Google Home routine that shuts off every light in the house, but if the fans are already off the routine will turn it on. How can I handle this to turn off fans only that are on?
Seems like it can’t be done.
TIA
Replace bulb with smart light that is controlled independent of bond provided bond forgets the light feature of the fan. This will allow you to detect a power off state of the bulb when the power connection at the socket is changed loosing contact with the smart device controller.
Thanks for the reply Joachim47,
Is there a way to solve without any additional expenditure?
This is at my mom’s house, and don’t believe that she will want to spend any more money.
Even if I were to replace the bulb, the solution wouldn’t affect the fans themselves, fans that are off will turn on when the routine runs. Which bulb would be recommended that would work with the bond home hub anyway?.
So you are talking about the fans themselves, not necessarily the light kit attached, if any, to the fan?
Your Google Home Routine turns off all lights at X PM, and is Power Toggling the fan motors?
I started with the lights.
But ideally would like fans to also power off every night at x time as well.
Do you know if they are older / previously normal AC motor fans, or are they newer quiet DC motor fans?
I ask because you’re probably not going to get 100% satisfaction without an outlay of either cost or time, unfortunately.
Option 1
Since the original remotes sound like they only have Power Toggle for Fan and for Light, you’d have to independently track (via some third party smart home controller, this is where the cost and/or time comes in) the power state of at least the Fan and likely the Light, and (likely) never use the original remote.
You’d also probably need to change the Google Routines to turn off everything except for the Fans and Lights linked to Bond; those you would likely use a Bond Schedule or the third-party home controller to logically examine the power state you’ve tracked and issue the proper Power Toggle commands to anything that is On that should be Off.
-OR-
Option 2
Going back to my original question, there are options to change out the remote + in-cowl receiver of any AC motor fans to gain an actual discrete On and Off for both Fan and any Light connected to the fan.
Depending on which kind you get, you would either use your existing Bridge to control those new receivers, or you’d get Smart by Bond remote + receiver with discrete On and Off for both Fan and Light. If going through Smart by Bond route, you could even return / sell your Bridge (since those have Bond + WiFi built in).
The “replace the remote + receiver” options wouldn’t necessitate a third party controller or massive overhaul / exclusion of Google Home Routines, since they’d natively behave as we all wish / hope existing Fans/Lights did.
Sadly, the long-standing default where most Fans and Lights have only Power Toggle remote commands bites all of us in the community, new and old, all too frequently. Seems to be biting you, currently.
We can point you to some other discussions here if you’d like more details for any of the options above.
@residualimages
Thanks for taking the time to write back especially to a topic that has been covered (will take you up on your offer to send over some discussions to outline some solutions)
I don’t know the answer to your question, but I think the fans are relatively older, so I think option one will be best suited for me to experiment with.
Okay. So there’s a small win you can do right away, without any third-party home controller setup.
But there are some important caveats, so consider these before going down this path. The caveats are not both acceptable to many folks, so we may end up at the bottom of my reply. 
A) this will ONLY work for the Light kit part of fans, and not the Fan Motor
B) this will ONLY work if no one uses the original ceiling fan / light remote. stick it in a dark drawer and only use Google Home / Assistant, or the Bond app.
If you can accept both A and B caveats above, then you can enable Bond’s State Tracking for each device’s Fan Light.
With that, a Google command to “Turn Off Fan XYZ Light” will only send the Light Power Toggle command if Bond last issued a Light Power Toggle command and updated its internal State Belief to say “the Fan XYZ Light was last known to Bond to be ‘On’”. If Bond last thought the Fan XYZ Light was ‘Off’ and you ask Google to tell Bond to turn Fan XYZ Light ‘Off’ (or all lights in a room / house ‘Off’), then Bond won’t send a Light Power Toggle command at all.
NOTE: the Bond Bridge is not able to constantly “listen” for the original remote being pressed, that’s why you must accept caveat B for this to work. Bond, or Bond via Google Home, is the only way you can change Fan Light power state for this to work.
If you cannot accept both A and B caveats above, then there are options which we can get into regarding:
-
physical switches / keypads / remotes to trigger Bond actions (still keeping the original ceiling fan / light remote in a dark drawer though)
-
Fan Motor power state tracking through third-party controllers
Here are some wide-ranging discussions that are semi-related to the (1) and (2) above. Though some of the use cases are related to shades or blinds, the strategies behind them are very similar to how Fans and Lights could be controlled via Bond’s Local API through third-party controllers:
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