I have a wireless controlled (with a inwall switch) fan that has a light (dimmer capability) and 1,2,3 levels of fan speed. I would like to switch this out with a z-wave type device. I am having a hard time finding a switch that would give me this level of control of the device. Is there such a thing anyone has seen or currently uses?
Thanks in advance.
There’s nothing out that does this right now. Depending on your creativity, wiring, and available canopy space you could potentially rig something up that would do this, but it would be something like hiding a switch or two inside the canopy and changing your wiring so that it’s always hot.
It would be easier to just change out the single gangbox to a double switch gangbox and have 2 smart switches. One dimmer for your light and a fan smart switch for your Fan. You can go with in wall relay module and such but it wont be easy and limited in feature.
Something like this is what I was referring to…
As others have said, you will need to network the fan and the light independently. In the thread that you link to, the author of that post is using a smart bulb for the light (it’s aZ wave, but it’s still a smart bulb) and then a fan control for the fan.
Once you have both the fan and the light set up so that they can talk to smart things, you can then put something on the wall that will allow you to ask the hub to control the various options. So the wall switch is basically acting like a remote for the fan and light. But it will work fine.
Enerwave makes a seven button wall switch of this type which is popular in the community. It doesn’t control the load at all. All it does is send messages to the hub. Then the hub will send the request to the fan or the light. That’s why each has to have network capability to receive those requests.
So you can use two in wall controllers (one for the fan and one for the light) or you can use one in wall controller for the fan and a smart lightbulb. Plus the on wall remote. It takes a little effort to set up, but it should work fine.
You could also use a $20 Wi-Fi phone or a tablet on the wall instead of the button switch if you prefer. That would give you better dimming control over the light, but not everyone likes the look.
You could also put a smart fan control switch in place of the existing switch and then put a battery operated dimmer switch next to it for the light.
Again, this requires using a smart bulb, in this case a zigbee bulb. This next picture shows the battery-operated dimmer switch next to a regular toggle switch. In your case you’d have it next to the fan switch, which looks more like a rocker, but I just wanted to show the size of the battery switch and this was the best picture I could find.
And the remotec ZRC 90 is an eight button battery operated switch that fits in the space of one gang box. So you could have low/medium/high/off for both the light and the fan.
So those are several options, but they’re all based on the same idea.
One) add network control of the fan
Three) add a wall switch that talks to the hub and can send separate requests for both the fan and the light.
