BOND Smart Home Automation

EDIT: after having it for a little while now, I've begun to really dislike it. It is CONSTANTLY disconnected and red/orange ringed. It is in the center of two overlapping zones of our WiFi mesh, it has more signal than it knows what to do with, and the entire network is optimized for smart devices, as I have more than I could count. This device has given me nothing but trouble, and I'm all likelihood, it's getting returned. I'm getting fed up. They mislead you about its capabilities, and it's unreliable to boot.Ok, so, I have a lot on my mind about this device so far. It was delivered 3 hours ago, and I only just recently got the thing setup. Although, I will use the term "setup" loosely. There were speed bumps to this at every single step.Initial setup. The USB connection to the unit is extremely stiff, with no indication to which way the cable goes in. The sleeve (that we usually can see the shape of and know) was rounded like a USB-C cable, yet, obviously this is a MicroUSB connection. So, it's a risk in breaking the port completely just by plugging it in. App setup, everything went normally during the first few steps of the unit connecting to the wifi and it updating its firmware to the latest version. Then came time to add my device.A ceiling fan, in this case. Specifically, a 1 year old Hunter Contempo II 54" Model #59476. This fan has no embedded controls, but remains to have the manual switch to change the direction of the blade rotation. The remote has four large (in comparison to the body of the remote) buttons. A light toggle, a fan toggle, a fan speed up button, and a fan speed down button. Now, anyone who's gone through the setup as painfully as I have, and likely, countless people who own fans with the same or similar remotes, knows that this BOND device is just not setup to have any idea what to do with toggles. At least not natively or properly. And, this lack of functionality impacts the cross platform controls for voice controls provided by Amazon's Alexa and Google's Home devices. Because of this lack of functionality, I can tell my Google Home to turn the ceiling fan off, and it will turn it off, and I will tell it to turn it off a second time, and it will turn it on. No memory that the device's last command to the fan was a power command, nope, just an indiscriminate toggle no matter the fan's current state. Thankfully, the workaround I have for this now is Google Routines and the fact that if you turn the fan speed down after reaching the lowest speed, it just turns the fan off. So "turn the ceiling fan off" triggers a routine that sends three commands of "set the fan to light breeze" (the wording here is a gripe later on), which sends the speed decrease command enough times to turn the fan off. So, lacking basic functionality #1, but workaround I found myself.As stated in the description of my fan, in which are very mainstream and popular fans, the remote does not have the ability to "set" a speed. Its an arrow up and it's an arrow down. The arrows will either take you higher in speeds when pressed up, or lower in speeds when pressed down (and as we covered earlier, will turn it entirely off if enough decrease speed commands get sent). The app we are made to setup and use the BOND through does not support any sort of speed controls that aren't set in stone. The app makes the assumption that every fan has a button for a specific speed (which I, again, wager is a minority compared to fans with simpler controls like mine), and it leaves anyone with a differing setup setting one speed as the decrease speed and another to increase, and sending repeat commands until you get to the higher/lower speed you are after. Now, I don't expect BOND to magically invent the ability to set individual speeds of the low-medium-high variety most fans have, I get that it's a technical limitation of the fan itself, however, BOND's inability to support the more popular format of speed control preys havoc, once again, on people whom are using this device through Amazon Alexa or Google Home. Referring again to sending multiple of the same command "speed 1" or "speed 2", and that is...more of an annoyance than anything else, I guess. But, the biggest annoyance with this is the command I have to use. I should be able to say "set ceiling fan to speed 1"---which is what I set as the decrease speed command from the remote---and it act upon said command, as is stated in the BOND support for commands. However, I wouldn't mention this if it actually worked. Unfortunately, the command given on their own website isn't a command that works with it's device via Google Home. They have ignored the simple phrase in favor of goofy, wordy phrases like "set ceiling fan to light breeze" or "hurricane" or any of that tripe. No, I want speed 1, and I shouldn't have to say "set ceiling fan to a Duck's soft fart" to get it. Just let me say speed 1, especially since I am required to use Google's Routines to make your system work the way it should.And lastly, it just plain does not work at all with the built in light. Despite being a simple toggle on the remote---obviously falling into the BOND device has no idea what state the light's in, because it's only a toggle and the BOND doesn't attempt to remember the last command of power it was sent, but I can't actually verify that because---it just doesn't work, no matter what one, of the many, options they added for lights---which kind of baffles me, why so many options for lights, but only one single option type for fan speeds? My workaround for that is just that I am lucky that I vehemently demand that those sockets never stop delivering power. The bulbs housed inside the dome are TP-Link Kasa smart bulbs, so their power functionality is done in the bulb itself, by the app control and voice control, and therefore would not function properly if the BOND forgot which is which and turned the lights off itself, and killed the power to the smart bulbs.Now, you're probably wondering why I am even bothering to write this all out in painful detail. It's because I spent $100 on a device with less than half the functionality of the device I spend $50 on for other uses, and I have had to create workarounds for every single step of the device's duties, not a single thing operates itself the way that the device claims it should. The Logitech Harmony Hub, which I purchased for $50, is a universal remote for essentially everything with an IR remote. It controls every kind of home entertainment device, a wealth of smart home products (not nearly all of them, but a grand assortment of the most popular kinds like Philips Hue and the like), and has the ability to manually add IR remotes to devices it doesn't have in its database. I have used the functionality of the latter to tie in a RGB LED light strip with a basic silly remote from a no name chinese company, so it turns them on and off and changes their colors, and I have also added an HDMI switch box that it also doesn't natively have. The only reason I didn't just manually add the ceiling fan to the Harmony, and skipped this whole mess, is because the remote is RF, and not Bluetooth RF, so it was incompatible.Now, let me iterate now. This BOND device is a wonderful breath of fresh air for folks who want to bring their IR/RF controlled ceiling fans into the 21st century, and add app/voice control. The fact that, after the painful setup process and the concessions made with functionality, I can tell my Google Home to turn on/off the fan and it does, is spectacular. Especially with how tiny the fans physical remote is. I am physically disabled, which has be sitting for extended periods of time, standing up is painful. So the fan's remote is on the end table next to me...until it's not, which happens A LOT. Kids are wonderful idiots. So, this device, with all its quirks, is still amazing. However, I believe if they addressed and implied solutions towards the issues it has now, which is all software based issues, they would have far far less returns than they have. Even just coming out and addressing the lack of functionality when it comes to speed controls, power toggles rather than switches, etc. So, I hope that my ramblings potentially helped someone having the same or similar issues as I had, and depending on where you are reading this from, and it allows comments, I will try to keep my eyes on notifications and answer any questions I may have. If you are reading this because it's a product review on a shopping site, like Amazon, don't let the issues completely dissuade you, find out more about how your fan works, and how you need it to work, and if you can use a workaround, I think it's still a worthwhile device. But it's definitely a bit over priced, if you compare it to similar products of similar quality.