Will a Bond hub meet my needs for my Carro ceiling fans?

[user1021]

Best Way to Control my Carro Ceiling Fans?

I should have researched first, but alas there was a sale and I jumped

I’ve done quite a bit of searching the forum and understand that there’s no integration for Carro smart fans and HE (I have a C7).

I’m outfitting my house with two sizes of the Carro Brently models: NS563B-L12-B5 & NS523B-L12-B5

Home Depot link to their literature:

c6654c85-8560-4cfe-82cc-3648106f5786.pdf

One thing I don’t fully understand is that it seems to utilize all three Bluetooth, WiFi, and RF to make it “smart”. For now, I simply used the default Carro app (Tuya rebranded) which allows me to present the fans directly to Alexa… however I’m in the middle of migrating to HomeKit where there isn’t native support. Plus, I’m wanting to put everything through HE first then to my voice assistant of choice. I utilize both Zwave and Zigbee in my house and prefer either over WiFi whenever possible.

My hopeful goal: Replicate all native functions to HE including 10 fan speeds plus on/off, a dimmable set of white LEDs plus on/off, a dimmable set of yellow LEDs plus on/off, and the 3 modes: summer, winter, nature; and control all of this with my voice and/or a wall mounted scene controller, etc.

My minimum goal: On/Off for fan and lights separately with voice using HomeKit.

What I’ve found from my searches:

1. Bond hub: There’s HE integration now, not sure if my model is supported and my remote has no FCC ID so my confusion about RF as a solution.

2. There’s mention of a discontinued Hampton Bay Zigbee controller that might be able to be sourced somehow (# 722-493 for the remote/receiver and # 1001 223 284 for the fan or maybe model # 43260)???

3. There’s mention of a King of Fans Zigbee controller that uses the Hampton Bay driver (Model # 99432 or # 76278)???

4. There’s mention of a Zwave Inovelli LZW36 switch?

5. There’s the Sonoff iFAN04-L which can be flashed with tasmota or ESPHome (possibly combined with MOES Smart Portable Universal Remote Control for Tuya Devices).

Most of my research fell into here: https://www.reddit.com/r/homebridge/s/ZjPk9i4VCp and here: Zigbee fan controller for 2022?

And idea if Bond with work with my Carro to meet my goals?

I truly appreciate any and all help!

[thebearmay]

The LZW36 is no longer being made, but it is being replaced by the VZM36 canopy module paired with the VZM31-SN 2-1 Blue Series Switch

[jtp10181]

Bond would probably work, but without info about the RF frequencies used there is no way to confirm.

[user1021]

Can I ask their tech support? What would be the correct question(s) to ask?

[hydro311]

Bond supports 300-450mhz RF. You'd have to determine if Carro works in that range.

[user1021]

I just spoke with Carro customer support and they searched and could not find an FCC ID anywhere nor information about what frequencies their product operates within. I will try sending an email as well.

The tech on a phone stated that the fan’s RF module/circuit board contains an RF antenna but all that it printed on it is “FCC Class B…” etc. but nothing to identify the frequency range or FCC ID. I can confirm the remote has no FCC ID, but I haven’t cracked open the canopy to look on the circuit board for myself.

At least I finally understand (mostly) how all the wireless protocols work together. When using the Carro app (rebranded Tuya app) on my phone it uses Bluetooth and/or WiFi to talk to the fan. When using my voice assistant, Alexa etc., uses WiFi to talk to the fan. When using the remote it uses RF or Bluetooth depending how you set it up to talk to the fan.

Assuming the way the Bond hub works is by “learning” the commands from the remote, right? I press a button on the remote and the Bond hub records the RF frequency the remote produces and then allows me to mimic it, right?

How do devices like the Inovelli and Sonoff work? Do I just connect them in the canopy connected to the house power then to the fan? Do they just control the voltage getting to the fan basically the more electricity it allows the fan to receive the faster it spins? That can’t be how it works… right? How could controlling voltage or whatever do anything other than on, off, stopped of fan? There wouldn’t be any independent control of fan and light and direction of spin, etc.

I simply do not understand how “universal controllers” work if it’s not by RF, but people use them all the time to make “dumb” fans “smart”.

Now that I’ve just “whiteboarded” my own thoughts, I’m guessing inline universal controllers provide LIMITED smarts like on/off/speed and that’s it while RF based universal controllers would allow mimicking all the features available on the OEM remote, right?

It sounds like if all my above assumptions are true and the Carro remote operates within the 300-450mhz range, then Bond would allow everything I want except the responsiveness that Zwave/Zigbee controllers provide and adding well powered and stable nodes into a Z-mesh.

Assuming all that, outside of responsiveness and additional mesh nodes, are their other pros/cons to finding a Z-solution instead of using a WiFi Bond hub?

Thank you!!

[jtp10181]

@user1021

How do devices like the Inovelli and Sonoff work?

Looking at your manual, it is not clear if there is actually a canopy module or if it just built into the fan itself. If there is a module you would replace it with a different one. If it is integrated you would not be able to use any other module with it, only the integrated system.

The fan canopy modules have a connection for the fan and for the lights as two separate circuits. They are made to control traditional non-smart fans.

@user1021

RF based universal controllers would allow mimicking all the features available on the OEM remote

As long as Bond has an action for that same function. I think you can map each button on the remote to an action in Bond. If I recall it was a little quirky and tries to steer you towards preconfigured profiles if it can find one.

[user1021]

Well, I’m starting to get nervous because I see the manual states there's an “RF Pairing” button and now I fear that’s why there’s no FCC ID anywhere or other RF information. Maybe the ONLY RF in use is for pairing and then all actual controls are only WiFi or Bluetooth.

I cracked her open found what I believe is the controller module you were unsure about.

Please check out these photos let me know if this is the piece I’d replace with a universal Z controller. I truly appreciate it. Thank you!

[user1021]

@jtp10181

Looking at your manual, it is not clear if there is actually a canopy module or if it just built into the fan itself.

I dug a little deeper and found mine actually does have an FCC ID…

[jtp10181]

Looks like a proprietary module, not something you could swap out for another.
DC Fans are more complicated than standard AC fans.

I suspected from the start that it may not even use RF at all, and the remote may be only Bluetooth. If they were RF would it even be legal to sell without the frequency information?

I have a cheap module I bought on Ali which also does not list any frequency info either but I have it paired up to Bond and it worked in my testing (have not put it in the fan yet).

I would probably just return them both, very little hope to smart control them with the hub unless you use the Tuya Cloud integration.

[user1021]

FCC ID 2ANDL-WBR3

This means there’s no RF?

[jtp10181]

Yes it appears that what they are calling RF, is just Bluetooth, which... is a type of RF.
The approved frequencies is around 2.4ghz which makes sense for Wifi and Bluetooth.

[user1021]

May I ask, what do you mean by “Tuya Cloud integration”?

Is flashing this controller to use Tasmota/ESPHOME a possibility?

Or using the Tuya app like the Reddit link in my OP?

https://www.reddit.com/r/homebridge/s/ZjPk9i4VCp

Are those ^^^ three things all the same thing and I’m just referring to them differently

[jtp10181]

Flashing to Tasmota is only possible on some Tuya chips and from what I gathered a few months ago all the new products were switching to new chips that could not be flashed anymore. It would get you local control over wifi if it was possible on those devices.

The homebridge plugin would just let you add it to Apple Home via Homebridge / Tuya cloud control, it would not get it into Hubitat.

This is the Hubitat Tuya integration, it is a custom user supported integration and the dev seems to be on hiatus right now, but is still merging PR's other people submit. It may or may not work correctly on your devices.

[BETA] Tuya Cloud Driver (Limited device support)

I developed this cloud driver for my personal use because I have some Tuya WiFi bulbs that can't be converted to Tasmota at this time and so I decided to port some of the code Tuya published on Github so I could get basic control of them from Hubitat. I have limited ability to support this driver but think it is useful and functional enough to share with the community. Features: Downloads your device list from Tuya and creates child-devices automatically Supports push updates from Tuya for n…

[user1021]

Okay, I think I understand now and I really appreciate all your help. It sounds like you’re saying my options are:

1. Return them and get different fans.

2. Flash to Tasmota if the onboard WiFi chip is able to be flashed and from there I could add as a WiFi device to HE and control it like any other WiFi device on my network.

3. Use the HomeBridge plugin to present non-HomeKit compatible devices to directly into HomeKit bypassing my HE entirely, but at least giving me control once I’m completely migrated off Alexa and locked into a HomeKit /Hubitat ecosystem.

4. Use the user created, custom Tuya Cloud driver to interact directly with the chip in the fan via HE’s WiFi antenna without having to flash to Tasmota, which if it works would give me everything I want, but I’d be reliant on the cloud instead of local control and there’s no official support other than this community.

Oooph.

Okay, stuff to think on how much time I want to spend on it with everything else going on in life right now. I guess I could always just leave an echo dot in the rooms with fans lol hell no

Gonna go check that device compatibility list to see if there’s any affordable, non-ugly ceiling fans I could swap in with less effort, but I will take a stab at attempting to flash with Tasmota before returning them as soon as I figure out how to do that and I might play with HomeBridge too. Although at first glance it wasn’t pulling me in as how I want this to work.

Thank you again, really appreciate it!

[jtp10181]

@user1021

Flash to Tasmota if the onboard WiFi chip is able to be flashed and from there I could add as a WiFi device to HE and control it like any other WiFi device on my network.

Sort of, you need to use the custom Tasmota drivers and there is possibly some complicated setup, but once working it should be solid from what I have read. Also might break it from using the vendors app, and possibly the bluetooth remote.

@user1021

custom Tuya Cloud driver to interact directly with the chip in the fan via HE’s WiFi antenna

No, it actually would talk to the Tuya cloud system, which then talks to the fan via the internet. No local control, all cloud.

There is an option 5 which is would involve sniffing out the local DPS codes the device uses to talk to the app over local LAN communication. Then you could use a driver template others have made and customize to your devices using the reverse engineered DPS codes. I have done this for a LED light strip and it works pretty good, but not easy to get setup.

Here is a post documenting some of what I was playing around with and discovered: Discussion of local control of Tuya Smart Wifi devices without flashing firmware