By way of background / context, I currently use Dominic's (dman's) Community developed Bond Integration on my main HE hub that controls by blinds and awnings. From my recent post re Bond, they have recently added support for Alpha motors, which I have in one of my blinds, now paired with my Bond bridge. While I have had mostly success in operating the Alpha motor, both from within the Bond bridge/app and triggering within HE, I have had a small level of inconsistency in successfully opening or closing the blind from HE, which at this stage I don't expect is Hubitat's fault. I typically include this Alpha blind when opening / closing a number of blinds, so it was suggested by Bond that I try setting up a Group within the Bond App (not HE, the actual Bond App ) and use the group instead of controlling individual blinds, which I had also considered in recent days.
When I setup a group of blinds in the Bond app, and then looked at the HE integration Apps on my HE hubs, both Dominic's and Hubitat's built-in version (freshly installed on my dev/test hub), I noticed that only the individual blinds show up, not any of the groups (I only have the one I just setup).
Should I see this newly created group in the built-in integration, or, if not, would it be possible to add this option into the built-in integration?
The dev/test hub running the built-in integration is a C-7 which is on the beta-program, running platform version 2.3.7.120.
I have two Bond hubs - one at each end of the house.
I have checked both built in integration and the third party integration. Neither appear to unveil the groups. The third party integration hasn’t been updated in a while - presumably when the built-in integration came out?
I am trying to figure out if I can call the Bond hub directly with a http call to activate a group. Apparently it is in the API but the bond folks have posted that not many integrations have added it.
I am also checking to see if the Home Assistant integration has it.
I am away so doing everything remotely - which makes it slower - plus I can’t see if the shades are actually going up and down!
My memory is that groups, at least in the API, may have been a recent thing... but I could be wrong. If I get a chance.... today... I will see what I can find.
Yeah, Dominic bowed out of the HE Community and platform some time ago, but was kind enough to leave behind some great work such as Bond and HPM (plus others I presume), with Bond being picked by the HE team.
Home Assistant doesn’t have groups integrated either. I can’t tell when Bond added it but it must have been fairly recently. I did see a Bond tech person posted some info on their forum.
I would post it in the feedback section as a feature request.
There have been hints that thy are interested in updating (completing) the system bond integration, but as usual, we have no clue on timeline. Otherwise that integration was put out in a basic state and has not been touched since.
Yes the dev from the community app left the community. I think the system app was built new from scratch, it uses a new API. Maybe very loosely based on the old community app. Some people still use the community app due to some devices that work better with it.
My fans work fine.
I do have them synced to a virtual device using the switch bindings app though, because the devices the system integration creates do not play nice with HomeKit.
I also have issues with my bond fan synchronizing correctly with HomeKit. I’ve tried the using Switch Bindings, and I’ve also tried both the built-in Virtual Fan driver as well as the Enhanced Virtual Fan driver. The problem I’m having is when turning on the fan from HomeKit. Regardless of the last speed the fan was set to, when I turn on the fan in HomeKit, it always sets the fan to 100% High. Anyone else seeing this issue?
I should update. The issue is not with the system integration on my side. It is actually between the Bond and the fan. The system integration is working. Don’t think that really helps with your specific issue unfortunately but wanted to point that out.
Try my customized Virtual Fan driver. I took the one posted with Switch Bindings and made some changes so it would play nice with Homekit (I am using Homebridge, not the system integration).
I am tracking the last speed in a state variable and when you turn it on, it should be setting the last speed, which would then pass over to the bond device via switch bindings.
It is designed to only work for 3 speed fans but I could possibly make it work for more speeds if there is a need.
Thanks for the quick response! So, I tried your Enhanced driver, and it seems to be doing the same thing for me. In the device page, I set the speed to Medium, and the fan turned on. I then turned it off. Next, I went to the Home app, and turned the fan on there, and it went to 100%. Here are a few screenshots:
My setup is a C5 hub running 2.3.9.166. I have several Apple TVs and HomePods for HomeKit hubs, and I’m running Homebridge v1.8.4 with Makerapi v0.4.15 plugin.
My fan is actually a 6 speed fan, but for this test, I set the driver to 3 speeds. Could that be problematic? Is there any way to monitor the state variable that you’re setting in the driver to see if that is working properly?
You need to enable logging on the virtual device and debug logging on switch bindings as well, and then explain what action you took for each section of logs.
Also make sure you are binding only the fan speed, not the on/off states.
Section 1:
In the Virtual Fan device page, I selected “low” in the dropdown and clicked Set Speed.
Section 2:
I waited a few seconds and clicked the Off button.
Section 3:
I switched to the Home app and clicked the Ceiling Fan device to turn it on. This device is the Makerapi/Homebridge device for the Virtual Fan in Hubitat.
Section 4:
I turned off the fan in the Home app.
It seems like the issue lies in section 3, as it seems to try to turn the fan on Low, but then also turns it on High. And finally, the device page shows the State Variable as high. Interesting.
Looks like in section 3 when you click the fan "on" in homekit it is sending a setlevel(100) and also an on command. The "on" tries to set low speed but the level 100 tries to set it to high.
So the issue might lie in Homekit.
I will try and test this on my fan I have setup through Homebridge, see what HK sends back to HE for commands. I do not usually use HK to control the fan, just to sometimes see if they are left on and then turn them off.
I’ll be curious to see what your experience is when turning on your fan using HK.
I was thinking about all the things I’ve tried recently, and I hadn’t looked into the HomeKit Integration in quite a while. I had several issues with the integration — devices not being supported, devices going unresponsive, etc. — but I thought I’d give it another try.
I enabled the integration again and now my fan appears in the list. I added just the one device, and to my surprise it works perfectly in HK at the moment. All 6 speeds appear to be supported, and when I turn the fan on via HK, it returns to the last speed selected.
I’ll play with this for a bit and see if it remains stable.
) and use the group instead of controlling individual blinds, which I had also considered in recent days.
