Picos attached to blank faceplate - strange behavior

Not only is it showing up in the logs when I press the button while attached to faceplate, the app shows that the light turns on. However, physically, the light isn't on. I think it's time to step away from this for a couple of days and approach from a different angle after a break.

Thanks for everyone's ideas. WHEN, and i do mean when and not if, I figure this out, I will post a follow-up. :slight_smile:

Ok, I am back looking at this again this weekend. Here is a sample log. Top one is where the remote was in my hand and the physical light came on. The bottom one is where the light turned to on in Bond app and Hubitat app but light bulb did not physically turn on. I can see that there are 3 less entries when it didn't work but this might as well be written in Chinese.

Device 1033 is Lutron Telnet
Device 1044 is the Pico
App 399 is Bond Home Integration

Can anyone translate?

And it just keeps getting weirder & weirder. I bought a plug in dimmer hoping that it could boost signal as repeater. NO DICE!!! Then I removed the faceplate thinking that maybe some wire is touching something it shouldn't. I didn't notice anything and now I cannot control the light from anywhere with the Pico. That would make me suspect that fan has a wiring problem but it's native RF remote controls fan normally and the Bond app still works fine. I have also noticed that when I push the Pico button, the blue lights on the Bond Hub seem to flash twice and the light doesn't change. When I turn the light on with the Bond hub, the lights on hub flash 4 times and the light turns on/off. My ST button can still turn fans light off/on.

@dman2306 Are there any viewable logs in your apps/drivers. Just based on the lights on the Bond hub, something different is getting to the Bond hub when using the Pico vs when using the app but I am grasping at straws at this point.

@bond-merck or @bond-jacob Is there a way to view the logs in the Bond App?

UUUUGGGGHHHHH! :smile:

Yes if you turn on debug logging in the app it will show you ever command it sends.

Yeah, I have that going. I hopeful there was more logging hidden in the code. Maybe the Bond guys might be able to help with debug logging for the Bond hub. outside of Hubitat. Thank you.

Hmm. Did you include any of the app logs here? I didn’t see it in the thread

@dman2306 I posted log of remote working and of not working in Post 21 but the 2 entries referencing your app are identical in both events.

The funny part about this whole thing is that i put one of the Ecosmart Remotes (paired to ST) that came with the bulb at Home Depot for $4.88 and attached it to the faceplate. It's working fine but there is a slight delay since it is going thru ST & the cloud. So, I have something working for the WAF until I can figure this out.

Is it possible that the RF control (which Bond must use to learn the remote and to control the fan) for the fan is on a frequency close enough to the ClearConnect frequency that there is some interference that way?

That sounds like a possibility. Lutron Clear Connect uses 434 MHz. When I set up my ceiling fans to have Bond learn the remote commands, I found that these were reported in the 4xx MHz band as well. Unfortunately, I couldn't find in the Bond app where this is displayed, but I recall this is displayed when each button is learned. It's worth a try to relearn the command that is causing an issue.

433 rings a bell to me (says Quasimodo).

I googled and 434 was on some Lutron documentation, but 433 comes up on other sites as well … either way, the fan may be stomping on Lutron Clear Connect … it's worth a try to see what Bond says regarding the frequency used by the device.

I couldn't find any FCC documents related to Bond - just did a quick search. That's usually the place to find the good technical information.

@bond-merck @bond-jacob Could you help with the frequency of the Bond hub? Have you ever heard of any issues with intereference between Bond hub and Lutron hub?

They are close. Lutron is apparently using 434MHz and looking at the ceiling fan remotes, they appear to be using 433 or 434Mhz.

From:

This extract (from page 15 of the presentation):
"Clear Connect RF technology uses a low-power, non-licensed frequency
band as defined by FCC Title 47 Part 15.231. Operating at Lutron’s chosen
frequency of 434MHz helps ensure that no other devices interfere with
Lutron’s wireless communications."

This reminds me of a (nearly) completely unrelated story. My father was a ham radio operator. At some point he had a gas insert installed in his fireplace. One day I came by to see him and he was complaining about how the damn gas fireplace would just switch on randomly. I did a little investigation and found his rig was almost directly below the fireplace, in the basement. And the damn gas fireplace only went nuts when he was on the air (and my mother was trying to relax in the living room).

I feel like your father right now......

The Bond Bridge supports the range 300-450MHz right now, and yes 433/434 is a very common frequency used in the type of devices that it'd control.

I don't recall ever hearing of this kind of interference, but @bond-merck is more familiar with Lutron than I am and may have an idea what's going on.

Reading through your previous posts now to see if I can make any sense of it.

@bond-jacob I posted this problem over on your Bond forum also and @bond-merck gave me a solution. Everyone can read the explanation but he thinks that the Pico is still sending duplicate commands to HE when the Bond has received command from HE already started transmitting to the fan. Since those are operating at such a close frequency, they are interfering w/ one another. His solution was to add a 300ms delay to turning on the light in the HE rule and THAT WORKED!!!!!!!

Thank you to everyone that chimed in to talk thru this weird problem. It's an issue that I have never read anywhere in this forum, the Bond forum, or ST forum so I hope that seeing this thread will help at least one other person in future.

Merck's answer on the Bond forum can be found here: Pico trouble with Bond-controlled fan - Bond Home Forum

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Cool!