Here is a neat little hack I made to the in-wall remote which I think some of you might find useful:
- Universal Ceiling Fan Wireless Wall Control
- Any old 5v or 12v phone charger/adaptor/LED Driver
- Cardboard
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I would not click on the links. First they get a file not found, then my virus scanner started flagging cache files.
That’s strange though, they are photos of the project stored on google photos. I assure you they are safe.
So the virus warning may have been a false positive in my scanner due to the file not being presented correctly.
Finally fixed my original post
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so, I see that my home depot has two of these ceiling fans in the store, before I purchase both, they are working well with smartthings?
Are these zigbee repeaters?
Works fine for me.
They occasionally lose connection with the hub but works for the most part.
how far from the hub do you have the fans?
also, does anyone use these with voice control? alexa or google? what are the commands for everything?
Yes you can use them with Alexa devices, and I’d imagine google home too but I can’t confirm that.
The device handler actually creates separate child devices for each fan speed and the light.
So you have to tell Alexa to turn on each speed (whatever you named each child device). You can’t just tell it to change speeds.
I may actually wait until there is a z wave ceiling fan, I’m not sure ZigBee will give me good enough connection to my hub
As close as 8ft to as far as 20ft
I have used it with both. Alexa occasionally forgets that a particular device once existed and you have to rediscover the device, while Google works perfectly and offer more features if you name a device something like “Amare Fan”, it will launch a google search for “Amari Fan” on the web 90% of the time
I’ve been waiting for a good zwave solution that supports light and fan myself, but at this rate, you might have to wait a lonnng time. There seems to be a lean towards zigbee as of late …for the major brands at least
I’ve had connectivity issues with one of these in my master bedroom and added a ST plugin outlet which also acts as a zigbee repeater…haven’t had a problem since. The other ones in my living area have worked perfectly.
For voice commands…things are different depending on what solution you use. From the feedback we received, it should work fine with Google Home. For the Echo…you may need to change the default name of your fan light device. Here’s why:
By default let’s say you name your device, “Living Room Fan”. This handler creates the following devices:
- Living Room Fan
- Living Room Fan Light
- Living Room Fan Low
- Living Room Fan Medium
- Living Room Fan Medium Hi
- Living Room Fan Hi
The last 4, that have the fan speeds, are hidden from the main things view but can be exposed for Alexa/Google voice control.
The issue some have run into with the Echo has to do with the fact that Alexa sees “Living Room Fan” and “Living Room Fan Light” as the same device. That applies to anything you have setup for Alexa control. If you have a wall switch named “Bedroom Light”…Alexa will allow you to control it by saying “turn off bedroom” or “turn off bedroom light”. My recommendation would be to rename the light device to something other than Light.
In my personal implementation of this, my light device defaults to “Living Room Fan Lamp” to avoid this problem, but you can simply rename the light device to anything that makes sense… other than LIGHT.
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which zwave plug did you buy that has ZigBee repeater in it as well?
It wasn’t a zwave outlet. It was the official SmartThings zigbee outlet that also acts as a repeater.
You can also get the Iris Smart Plug which acts as repeater for Zigbee and Z-Wave. DTH is here: