Integrating More of the Home

Olibra Bond Sidekick Keypad Bridges Smart Home Control to Overlooked Household Appliances

By Jay Basen

Smart home products manufacturer Olibra is focused on connecting often-overlooked household items, such as ceiling fans, fireplaces, and shades, to the rest of a smart home. Their first product, the Bond Bridge, allowed users to integrate fireplaces, shades, and ceiling fans that are controlled by RF (radio frequency) and IR (infrared) remote controls into a smart home. Then the Bond Bridge Pro removed the IR functionality, but expanded into motorized shades integration and offered increased RF range, more devices that could be controlled, and the ability to work with Bond Sidekick keypads.

The Bond Sidekick keypad seems very simple at first. It offers an eight-button keypad that comes in two versions: a Sidekick for Shades or a Sidekick Scene Keypad.

The engineers at Bond have done a really good job designing these keypads. First, they have a 10-year battery life. Second, the keypads are very thin and designed to fit into a standard Decora faceplate used for light switches in many homes. The keypad design, however, goes beyond just fitting in a standard faceplate. The keypads are so thin that when one is installed in a Decora faceplate, it sits flush with the back of it. This allows a Sidekick keypad to be mounted anywhere in a home.

Alternatively, a homeowner could change the faceplate of an existing light switch to one with one more opening. Then the Sidekick keypad can be mounted right next to the existing light switch where it minimizes its visual impact on the decor of a room.

The buttons of the Sidekick also can be custom, laser engraved (through Laser Engraver Pro) with text that describes their operation. This allows a smart home hobbyist to create a professional looking installation the likes of which have been reserved for people who have paid an integrator to install professional smart home system.

In the near future Olibra will even allow the number of buttons on the Sidekick to be changed. So, for example, instead of the standard eight-button keypad configuration, a homeowner will be able to convert the Sidekick into a three-button keypad if that happens “cover” all of the smart home equipment controlled in that particular room.

The Sidekick for Shades is designed to directly control shades by sending RF commands to them in response to button presses. By sending commands directly to the shade, it makes the system very responsive so there isn’t a delay between a button on the keypad being pressed and the command reaching the shade to, for example, stop it precisely where it blocks direct light from causing glare in a room.

The Sidekick Scene Keypad enables integration with third-party ecosystems. For example, using the Bond’s local control API, I was able to expand the original Crestron-Bond driver that I wrote to include receiving events whenever a button on the Sidekick Scene

Keypad was tapped, double tapped, or held down. I found the communications time to be very speedy between when a button was pressed and when my Crestron smart home processor received notification of the event. Chowmain software has already released updates to their Bond drivers to support the Sidekick. I expect that you will see drivers for other smart home ecosystems updated in the near future as well.

Sidekick Keypads, as well as everything else related to the Bond Bridge Pro, is configured using the Bond Home app. I found the app very easy to use. It was a welcome feature that it even supported running on my iPad when the iPad was in landscape position.

Overall, the Bond Bridge and Bond Bridge Pro offer both consumers and professional smart home integrators a way to integrate fireplaces, ceiling fans, and shades into a smart home, which, in many cases, has been very challenging. The Bond Sidekicks, coupled with the Bond Bridge Pro, offers the convenience of adding keypads as smart home control points throughout a home. In addition, they provide a professional look to a smart home that has only been available to people who have paid a professional smart home integrator. x