You can read my lecture notes from Win Winmaw, who talked about the Shan Plateau in Burma, where Dendrobium lindleyi grows. Use the top menu Search function and search on DVOS and Winmaw.
It grows on evergreen and deciduous trees at higher elevations not far from the equator in a very seasonal monsoon climate. In the summer it's very wet, humid and shady. In the winter the trees drop their leaves and the plants get substantially more sun, for a much longer period of light than most of us can provide in the US. In winter it gets down to nearly freezing at night. Also it doesn't rain there in the winter, but the dew is so heavy the ground is slippery wet every single night. The Den plants are soaking wet all winter.
I suspect trouble flowering it is due to keeping it too warm in winter, and not giving it enough winter light. People look up the climate, see there is no winter rain, and assume the plant is dry all winter. But they don't find the information about the dew.
You could hang the Dendrobium lindleyi outside on a sunny tree so long as it's above freezing. The risk is you would forget it on a night with frost. Next best would be to put it in a sunny window in a room you don't heat, that gets very cool to cold at night, but not freezing. Water it regularly.
Dendrobium cucumerinum comes from an exceptionally hot and dry desert with a long, dry winter. Succulent hobbyists were introduced to it a few years back, and tried to grow it like this. The plants all died quickly. This is a great example of paying attention to microclimates. If you scour the Internet you will find reports of where this grows. It is on the undersides of oak branches hanging over seasonal streams. During the hottest part of the year, summer, it experiences shade, high humidity and is wet much of the time - but fully exposed on the oak bark. After the rain stops in fall, the streams dry up eventually, so for a month or two in midwinter they may not flow. But the plant is still in the shade, and it is not as hot as during the summer - but it is not cold.
Easier-to-grow relatives in this group of Dendrobium, sometimes segregated into the genus Dockrillia, are
D. linguiforme, D. toressae and D. wasselii. You can look up my lecture notes from Alan Koch speaking to the Desert Valley Orchid Society on Dockrillias.
Vanda pumila / old name Ascocentrum pumilum needs a huge amount of water, lots of air at the roots, high humidity and high temperatures to be happy. The other (former Ascocentrum, now sunk into Vanda) species also need these but are a little less demanding. The others also prefer a lot more light than miniatum wants. I suspect your plant isn't warm enough to tolerate the root damage from falling out of the basket, and at lower temperatures the medium didn't dry out as fast as it should have. The Vandas with blue flowers tolerate cooler temperatures better. If you don't want a big blue hybrid, look for V. coerulea (bigger plant), V. coerulescens and V. lilacina (small plants.) V. coerulea grows close to Den. lindleyi but at lower elevation, with less winter dew.
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