The big idea: in beta or in full release, add an option for “advanced” users to add Custom Devices. You (the Bond team) can take advantage of the UI and a user’s mental model to have the user’s expand and build a device library. Let me explain, I bought my bond specifically to add my 3 Hunter ceiling Fans. The first two, went great. The bond recognized the remotes and added all of the functionality in a snap. The last fan didn’t go so well, it wasn’t the Bonds fault… I bought a refurbished Hunter fan that came with a 3rd party hunter remote… my solution, was to buy an OEM Hunter remote, sync it to the Fan and then remote.
Kind of an expensive fix, but it works with all of the functionality I wanted it to have. If I had the ability to select my remote and match sync to a carrier signal, that would have been better.
Next, I bought Energizer’s RF counter lights. I didn’t expect the bond to recognize the signals, but it did! That’s cool, except the device type is a ceiling fan… which I’m sure doesn’t help out the dev team in categorizing signals…
All in all, what I’m trying to say is, you can give user’s the ability to tell you; the device brand, the device type, and device function of EVERY signal they sync with the Bond. Users can build a device library, you can use statistics to remove outliers from the main list of devices. And you can Rapidly expand into making every device Smart programmable at the user level. Today most people getting into Smart Home Automation are hobbyist and willing help developers make them a better product.
Btw, I’m a computer scientist by degree and a system engineer by career.
It would be awesome if these custom device profiles could be added for other beta users with a install at your own risk disclaimer, but not be available to non-beta / public.
Another thought to expand on this would be to have a rating system to have other users test these remote types.
Both are great ideas! We’re finally about to cross the V2 threshold and can start devoting serious resources into remote compatibility again. Got some exciting stuff in the works in this area.
I too would like to see the product move in this direction. Could be very intersting if there’s a significant number of motivated community members writing device definitions.
We will try to get preliminary documentation on BondScript within the month for your comment.
We have used another similar product in the past (Matterlink MultiX) which does 433 and IR based control.
With that we found that product was that Blind control, Garage door control, fan control were the three most popular RF devices to control.
- Blind needs up, down, stop commands
- Garage door needs open and close commands (sometimes this is a toggle code)
I’m very excited remote compatibility is being increased.
One day, will the Bond Bridge allow “user-taught remotes”? I have a Lasko heater that uses an ordinary IR remote. It’d be great if one day I could teach the Bond Bridge those commands and then use my voice to control the heater!
I think this is essentially the unique selling proposition of “universal super remotes”, like the Logitech Harmony, etc.
This works today. Just choose “generic device” , Advanced, and choose IR. Bridge will simply copy the IR signal. I use it with my split AC units.
Oh, my gosh. You’re a miracle worker (and the Bond team, too). It worked perfectly!
I’d tried to before, but it never worked. I had to manually set it to “IR” and it found it instantly. One tip: when I spammed the power button & the Bond Bridge accidentally understood it as a rapid 2x “power toggle” + “power toggle” command. Just hitting it once let it learn just the single “power toggle”.
I can finally rearrange my room (and get the Bond to point a little more directly at the heater, haha).
Thank you, thank you!
Wow! Thanks for listening to me!