Looking for switch with ability to control both light and fan speed

Devices & Integrations
5

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.

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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.

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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

  1. add network control of the light

Three) add a wall switch that talks to the hub and can send separate requests for both the fan and the light.