Would Bond WiFi be able to control Star Ceiling Fan (version 7 - https://www.starfans.co/collections/star-seven-star-7-ceiling-fan-with-light), and specifically, would it be able to dimmer the light, and also switch the on/off state of the light, while providing a real-time status indication back to Samsung SmartHome?
Currently, the Light is toggled (on/off) through a single button in the remote (of type RF), and this same button is also controlling the dimmer (long press dims the light in a circular state).
When with the original remote, you hold a button to dim, the Bond team has explained that it’s difficult to have an effective dimming strategy outside of the app. If the original remote doesn’t have a “brightness percentage” indicator or discrete commands to say, “set brightness to 30%” directly, a Bond bridge won’t be able to magically add that ability to the fan’s receiver, nor turn that fan’s receiver into a real-time state transceiver.
I don’t see the RF range this fan series uses in the documentation, but I do see it listed on Amazon as compatible with Bond, so someone should have tried it before marking it as such.
If you got a Bond Bridge and only controlled the fan (power and speed) and light (power and start/stop dimming) through the Bond app and integrations using Bond, there is a “trust state” feature you can use to have Bond track whether or not it turned on/off fan, or turned on/off light (said another way, using the Bond Bridge sometimes and the original remote other times will make any integration unreliable as to power and speed state); however, as explained above, the Bond Bridge will not know anything about current brightness level, due to sort of a weak point of the majority of RF based fan kits from manufacturers. Doesn’t mean you can’t attempt something utilizing X seconds of “send dim” commands through Bond controls within SmartHome programming, but I feel like most forum members with these kind of limited fans (myself included) cannot achieve reasonably reliable brightness settings.
@residualimages is spot-on with his explanation of the situation with Bond Bridge. Basically, we emulate the remote, but you’re not going to have dimming or true state feedback into SmartThings.
If you haven’t bought your StarFan yet, you might ask them about their Smart by Bond fans. We make a line of smart fans for them, but I don’t know about availability. (No secret… their logo is on our website!) Of course, there’s absolutely no feedback issue with the smart fans — you can get true brightness control from SmartThings and other integrations.