How to turn on all fans when thermostat reaches a certain temperature?

SmartApps & Automations
#1

Please help. I have 4 ceiling fans in the house. I’m trying to figure out how to turn them all on when my Honeywell thermostat reaches a certain temperature. I’ve looked at Virtual Device switches, IFTTT, etc. It seems there are many ways to do this, but I’m still not quite understand what the steps should be. I’ve installed a Virtual Device manager, and also set up Smart Lighting (I have the Hampton Bay controllers, which show up as light switches), but don’t know how to get the Honeywell to activate these. in IFTTT, I can only pull up the Honeywell Lyric as a service (I have the RTH9580 Wi-Fi). Please tell me what I’m missing. Thanks!

[EDIT] Finally figured out how to use Thermostat as a trigger. Now I need to figure out how to put all my ceiling fans as a virtual device switch.

#2

You should check out webCoRE…

2 Likes
#3

Actually, I finally figured it out. I’m kinda scared to start delving into Webcore, lol. I spend (waste) enough time on the regular stuff…don’t know if I’m ready to learn yet another infrastructure yet.

#4

As @jkp mentioned, WebCoRE is very powerful but I get that many folks are intimidated by the awesome world.

We often recommend folks to use CoRE for simple automations, it’s learning curve us much shorter and has the feel of a regular SmartApp.

Alternatively, if you have access to RBoy Apps check out this app which allows you to use fan/thermostats and other devices to “control” your temperature. Basically you can set a temperature threshold to trigger turning on a fan or other cooling appliance (and vice versa).

#5

Actually, I just created my first piston. I can turn on all fans now, much easier than using IFTTT.

Now, I’m going to create individual pistons for each room fan! :smiley:

3 Likes
#6

ceiling fans just cool people. They don’t actually cool the house, so if everybody leaves, don’t forget to turn them off.

Ideally each fan has its own room occupancy sensor.

1 Like
#7

Can you recommend a good sensor? I’d also like to get one for the bathroom lights as well.

#8

And it can be so hard to get people to understand this. My family love to think running a fan on Apache mode will cool the room. Needless to say, I have fixed all that with ST/webCoRE, :wink:.

#9

I hate to ask, but what is “Apache mode”? :smile:

#10

Our inside joke at home when someone runs a fan on full blast - feels like an Apache helicopter is coming in for land :slight_smile:.

2 Likes
#11

That makes more sense. My first instinct was to imagine Native Americans, lol.

#12

Question: I have a virtual switch for all my fans. Do I need to create separate Pistons to turn the fans on and off?

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#13

The virtual switch essentially groups all of your fans, so that one switch controls all. If that is the case, and you want to control all of the fans as a group, you can make do with one piston that controls the virtual switch. I’m not sure you gain anything over addressing all the fans in the piston as you posted, but either should work.

#14

Well, I’m basically just playing with creating Pistons for now. There’s a lot of options to mess with. Right now, I’m trying to program some lights to turn off in the morning, but I’m getting this message:

“This piston does not subscribe to any events. Unless executed by other means, it will never run on its own.”

Did I set up the $time variable correctly?

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#15

I don’t think you want to use a variable there. You need a statement like “Every day at 6:30 am”.

Start with the “Timer” box in the Add New Statement dialog box.

This is more complicated than you’re doing, and it’s for a thermostat, but it shows the statement you want:

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