Just sent you a PM with the requested information.
Thanks!
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Same here. Just sent PM with information.
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Thanks for the info.
Follow up questions about your BF/BY-305 remote control to operate the motors. Note I am NOT talking about using the Bond Home app at all:
-
When you do a short tap on the up/down button, does the motor (a) move only a short step (about 20 degrees) or (b) move all the way up/down to the limits? – My motor does (a).
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When long-pressing the up/down button, what does the motor do? — Mine make a short movement (same as short tap), but then after ~1/2 sec they start moving all the way to the limit, and continue moving even after my finger is lifted off the button.
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What is the reliability of the motor’s response to the factory remote control on the short tap? Please try a simple experiment: move the motor to the lower limit. Then do 20 short taps. Count how many times the motor successfully responds. – In a test here with two motors being controlled simultaneously, one motor that responds 19/20, the other responds 15/20.
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Any comment on reliability of the long-press? If you hold down the button, do all the shades move? Do they all move at the same time? Or do they move in a staggered way? — In my experience, shade motors on the same remote channel may move with 0.5–1.5 seconds of difference.
Philosophical aside: We have found that products controlled via hand-held remotes can get away with intermittent responsiveness because there’s a tight control loop in the human nervous system, like eye-hand coordination, whereby a user will notice the lack of response and just tap again. After a while, this may be barely noticeable. However, when you then set up a schedule with the Bond Bridge, it’s really noticeable if your shades did not respond, because the human brain is out of the loop. In short, the bar is much higher for reliability of an automated system.
So, I have the little switch inside my BF-305 remote set to the “R” setting, which makes the motor operate as the “b” option. The “up” button on the remote moves the motor all the way up, the “down” button moves it all the way down, and the middle button moves it to the preferred position on the first press, and stop on the second press. Long-presses don’t do anything different in the “R” settings.
The reliability of the motor’s response in this mode is 100%.
If this doesn’t answer all your questions, please let me know, and thanks again!
Rob
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Thanks all for the input. With your help, we’ve cracked it! We have an alpha working on my desk here. Will deploy in v2.20.10-beta tomorrow for your feedback, and then out to “stable” a few days later.
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Fantastic! I’ll look forward to testing tomorrow’s beta release!
Rob
v2.20.11-beta firmware is available now. Please let us know how it works for you. You will need to tap on the “BOFU” or “BF-305” options when you have a choice of several detected protocols.
Can you please advise the setup steps. I’m not getting an option under Shades once I go through the remote pairing step.
| merck Olibra
July 8 |
- | - |
v2.20.11-beta firmware is available now. Please let us know how it works for you. You will need to tap on the “BOFU” or “BF-305” options when you have a choice of several detected protocols.
First, upgrade Bond Bridge to v2.20.11 or higher firmware.
Now add the shade:
- (+) button
- Remote Control
- select your Bridge
- Shades
- Other
- Set location & name > Continue
- choose a command > pick any one
- now record your BF-305 remote
- You will get a few options, select the “BF-305” one (See image below)
- confirm that it works at the test screen
- Success! You now have the new device added.
@merck , Thanks for all the great work. It is almost there but needs a bit more. Here are my results.
BY-305 :
- Channel #1 : I have (2) older roller shades on this channel. Adding this channel went as planned using the new remote in the database Both shades works well and synchronized.
- Channel #5 : The same procedure was followed but for some reasons Channel #1 was being controlled again. Switched to manual set-up and with a few trial and errors got it to work.
- Channel #2 : Same thing as previous.
- Channel #4 : Same as previous. I have (2) shades on this channel. Its hit and miss for synchronization. Sometime one roller will react sometime both.
- Channel #3 : I gave-up on this one as it just would not work.
I moved on to my last shade working on Channel #1 of a BF-305. Used the automated set-up and surprise surprise it is controlling Channel #3 of the BY-305 that I had given-up.
So I’m not too sure why it is not fully working. If you look at the data from the server end, I have named the device as ex.: BY-305/1.
Let me know if you need more info.
Confirmed. Working on all three blinds.
Any guidance on double clicking STOP for the favorite setting? That is the only function not working on BF-305.
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Yes! We were just working with @mv1707 and he reported similar issue. — We’ve got a fix available now under the version number v2.20.12-beta. (The problem was, in an attempt to make the control as reliable as possible, we were sending 28 packets instead of the 7 that the factory remote sends. However, sadly there’s no different code in this protocol for Halt (stop) versus Preset (favorite position), and, the shades interpret a long string of the same code as a second button press. So, our solution is just to reduce the packet reps down to 14, which seems to be below the threshold for being detected as a second press of the button, but still more reliable than 7 presses.)
Also, we learned that this remote is often detected at the wrong frequency, which can cause issues. You may want to set the frequency manually to 433.92 MHz by using the “Advanced” option during device set up.
Just to follow up in public here: the problem here seems to be a combination of the Bridge detecting the wrong frequency, recording noise, and the backend caching the previous result. — We can clean up at least the backend caching issue as soon as we find the root cause. — Workaround is, as we discussed, to set frequency to 433.92 MHz in Advanced option during device creation.
Okay, so the new beta has been working reliably for me, too, so thanks a bunch!
I do have a small issue, though ---- I previously had programmed the “open” button on the Bond Hub to the “stop” button on the actual BF-305 remote. This mapping button approach allowed me to open the shade to the preset position, and further, with Amazon Alexa integration to say, “Alexa, open the shades” and the shade would open to the preset position. Of course, opening was unreliable and sometimes took several tries to make it happen.
Since I can no longer change the button mapping, and Alexa doesn’t recognize the “stop” command, I can’t figure out how to open the shade to the preset position using Alexa.
Am I missing something? Is there any way to change the button mapping so that the “open” button opens the shade to the preset position?
Thanks again for all of the great work done with this remote.
Rob
OK, it’s an issue on our side. We implemented this template with just the Open and Hold features, neglecting the Preset feature.
We just pushed out another beta (v2.20.14-beta) with the Preset feature exposed. But in order to make it take effect, you will need to either re-program the device.
TECH NOTE: Instead of reprogramming the remote, you could use a command line to send a PUT request the v2/devices/{}/reload endpoint (curl -H "Bond-Token: xxxxx" http://bondip/v2/devices/xxxxx/reload -X PUT -d '{}' or similar). I know that’s annoying but it’s an artifact of our system where you can delete commands from template devices and have the deletion persist. The side effect is that new commands we add in a fw update are seen by the bond as previously deleted, so thus the need for reload. It’s something we may fix when we refactor the templating system.
Please let us know how this works. If all looks good, we will get this out to everyone through the stable channel on Monday. (We don’t release to all users on Fridays 
).
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Okay, Merck, I’ve updated to the latest beta and reprogrammed the remote. All is good with the app----the preset feature works fine when pressing the “stop” button on the app.
My only problem is the integration with Alexa. When I say, “Alexa, stop the shades”, the response is “Shades doesn’t support that”. Alexa works fine with opening and closing, but I can’t seem to figure out the command that will work to raise the shade to the preset setting. As I mentioned before, when I previously had to manually program each button in the app, I just programmed the “open” button on the app using the “stop” button on the remote, which made the “Alexis, Open the Shades” command open the shade to the preset position, at least when the command worked, which often required multiple tries. Now that the remote is in the database, I can’t “remap” the buttons to the app.
Is this something you have to change for Alexis integration, or is there some other way to deal with this?
Thanks yet again for the excellent work!
Rob
the command that will work to raise the shade to the preset setting
Sorry, I should have given some examples. You can say:
Set [device name] to favorite position.
Set [device name] to preset mode.
It also may be available through the Alexa app as “Preset”.
“Alexa, stop the shades”
Sadly that is not a supported command by Alexa smart home skill, AFAIK. We can only add different “modes” controlled by utterances of the form Alexa, set DEVICE to MODE_NAME (mode), where the word “mode” is optional.
Okay, Merck, that works beautifully. I’m very happy to get this all working reliably, and you and the team have greatly helped with the WAF (wife acceptance factor), which was difficult to achieve when it took several tries to get the shades to move.
Thanks again!
Rob
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Hi,
Installed the .14-beta this AM and re-learned (8) roller shades on (6) Channels spread on (2) remotes. Tried some of the scheduling with Open, Close and Preset. All seems to work like a charm.
This is not a show stopper but since you are looking for beta feedback, I noticed that while you are at the “Test screen”, the “Open” and “Tilt open” button did not seem to produce any result when briefly tested. However, once the remote saved, these features works. I’ll retry, paying more attention later on.
I really must mention the exceptional efforts and support that @merck and @guy have thrown in to make this work.
Many thanks.
Michel.
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After further testing, this problem is only encountered on the (2) older shades I have, built in 2015. The other (6), built in 2021, are working as expected when pressing Open or Tilt open on the testing screen. Again! once saved, all is working good so I don’t think it worth putting any effort on this.
Michel.