I just installed my Bond Bridge to control my fireplace via Alexa. I got everything working except that the RF signal that is sent to turn the fireplace on and off is too short. I have to give the command multiple times, as much as 7-8 times, to get the fireplace to come fully on. I did manage to setup Alexa routines to do this for me but Alexa has a minimum of 5 seconds between actions so it takes 30 seconds to get my fireplace on or off. Its clear the on and off buttons are actually up and down buttons. On my handheld remote, I hold the on/hi button down until the fireplace is all the way on. To turn it off, I hold the off button down and its off. I need the Bond Bridge to do the same. I need it to either continuously send the command or repeat the command for a preset number of seconds. Is this possible or can it be added?
First off, itâs most helpful if you post the FCC ID and a picture of the front/back of your fireplace remote. The FCC ID is not personally identifying, but rather lets us know what RF protocol you are referring to.
Second, did you have to record more than one button? Or did the Bond app find a result in our database?
Good news is, either way, if you are familiar with using an HTTP API, you should be able to modify this yourself.
Navigate to the command(s) you want to modify, and then PATCH devices//commands//signal with {"reps": n} where n is the number of times you want to repeat the command. See docs here: Bond Local API
Trying to accomplish the same thing with my fireplace, send multiple signals to get the flame up. I see how the âpatchâ would accomplish that but Iâm not certain how to apply the patch to the bridge. I know the ip of the bridge. How do I do this? Thanks again
Thanks for the video. Wasnât sure where you were doing that and then I noticed curl, and after a search found it was included in Win10. Was able to drill down and find the command I needed and will try to patch the reps to a number higher than 1. My question is once I change the reps do I have to do the last part you mentioned regarding transmit txâŚ
Tried patching following your video with this error result.
C:\WINDOWS\system32>curl -iH âBond-Token: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxâ http://192.168.50.220/v2/devices/d90ffd28/commands/08eb5024/signal -X PATCH -d â{ârepsâ: 20}â
HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request
Content-Length: 50
Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8
{"_error_id":23,"_error_msg":âjson parse errorâ}
curl: (3) [globbing] unmatched close brace/bracket in column 3
No, you donât have to. I was just demonstrating how to perform a quick test transmission while you are there. Immediately after the PATCH, the Bond Home app and integrations will use the updated signal parameters.
@jacob Thanks to you both for helping me with this. Never heard of curl till today but I now have 3 additional commands programmed for my fireplace, low, medium and high that were not available before. All I had was flame up and flame down. All tested and working. Now to see what I can do with Alexa. Any thoughts?
It worked! I just opened terminal on my mac and ran the curl commands as you suggested. A few things to note: The IP address was different. I used the Ping command followed by the bondid.local to get the right IP address. Perhaps thatâs just due to my network setup. Also, for some reason I could not initially see my device. I had setup the device using the fireplace shortcut when adding devices. For some reason, when I do that and then click on My Bond Bridge it shows 0 devices associated even though I see the device under My Devices. As a result, when I used curl to find my device it would not appear. I played around with adding and removing my fireplace with no success until finally I added the fireplace as a generic âDeviceâ rather than âFireplaceâ. With that, the device was associated with my bond bridge and I could find it when I used Curl.
Alexa works great with it too now⌠âAlexa, turn on the fireplaceâ and it goes to full flame!
DaDD -> What model Valor fireplace do you have (and what remote)? I also have a Valor (G4 Insert) and can learn the basic commands of the remote (âoffâ, âflame upâ, âflame downâ) but need to somehow learn âonâ (which is actually holding down a two-button combo of âoffâ+âflame upâ). This ignites the pilot and sets it to max. Off turns it off and also the pilot, so I would actually want a custom off command that sets it to no flame, but pilot still lit as they recommend to keep the pilot on during winter months.
Additionally double clicking flame up should set it to max automatically, and double clicking flame down should set it low automatically (ie. discrete commands) but the learned commands do not run quickly enough to trigger this, this PATCH stuff should work. I am surprised there is no way to do this in the GUI.
I am curious though, how you created your hi-medium-low settings, in particular the medium flame setting. Its kind of a âstatefulâ setting, Hi or Low you could use a discrete max or min code or just repeat flame up or down x times until its full and it wouldnât matter on its starting point.
Medium though depends on its current state, unless your remote also supported a discrete medium setting. Ie. if the medium just simulated pushing flame up 5 times, if you are already at full it would do nothing.
Thanks for all the good advice, I got mine patched now and it works with my gas fireplace. I would like to suggest that BOND add a simple option to the BOND App allowing any user to increase the repetitions (length of the transmitted signal) until the commands actually worked without having to resort to this programming effort⌠Put that under the ADVANCED section. Having people go into the API to reprogram the unit is challenging for non programmers. I documented all my steps below for novices but the forum would not let me upload a word document, only images. So I had to take a screen shot and upload an image instead. Not very user friendly in image format sorry.
Good idea. It would be hard to make a wizard for this, but perhaps we could allow âeditingâ the command, and we could expose the reps field for user input. Definitely âadvancedâ, but less advanced than going into the API :).
Hey everyone first post here. Iâm trying to read all this and Iâm a bit confused with it all. First problem is I try to run curl and it just doesnât open up for some reason. Is there a much easier way to up the signal repeat number without going through all these steps. Iâm a real noob at this.
