First of all … awesome job to the developers of the King Of Fans Zigbee Fan Controller. Thank you!
The Home Depot wink universal remote control/receiver is working great to control my ceiling fan/light with ST in the “old ST app.” I can also control the ceiling fan/light using Alexa via ST. So, on to my next goal to get the overall project to work.
I have a ecobee temperature sensor located in each room which has a ceiling fan. They report to ST just fine and I don’t want to spend more money in each room for temperature sensors. I would like to create some automations in ST to control my ceiling fans based on the reported temperature from the sensors. As an example, one automation would turn the fan on to one of the 4 speeds, or comfort setting when the reported temperature exceeds a threshold, and then another automation will turn off the fan when the temperature drops below the threshold.
Here is what I am up against:
In the old ST app, the ecobee temperature sensors do not show up as a device to use as a trigger. They show up as a motion sensor device to use as a trigger. Because of this, I can’t figure out how to use the old ST app to create an automation which will use the ecobee temperature sensors as a trigger.
In the new ST app, the remote control for the fan only shows up as a on/off device. I’m assuming this has to do with the app being developed under the old ST app. The good thing is that the ecobee sensors can be used as a temperature trigger. The bad thing is, I can’t use all of the awesome settings which are available to me in the old ST app. So, I can correctly automate turning on the fan when the temperature exceeds a threshold, but it will only turn the fan on to the last speed in memory.
I don’t know a lot about programming, so I don’t know how much work is involved … but does anyone know how to port the existing DH handler so that the new ST app can recognize all of the awesome features and benefits it has to offer?
Forgive my ignorance, but I have no idea how to use virtual switches in either app. All I know is that each speed shows up as a device in the device list in the old app, but do not show up as a device in the new app.
In V3 the fan speeds show up in smart lighting but not in the custom automation creator. You could probably make something work by using both smart lighting and the custom automation creator by mapping the fan speed switches to virtual switches that can be seen in the custom automation creator.
Please forgive my ignorance, but as I stated previously in this thread … I have no idea how to use virtual switches. I have tried searching the forum for a good, simple explanation for how to do this, but the more I look, the more confused I get.
Then you would use smart lighting to mirror each speed of the fan controller to a separate virtual switch. You would have 4 virtual switches. You would turn the virtual switch on/off and then use an automation within smart lighting to mirror the fan speed to the virtual switch. You would need an automation for each speed/virtual switch.
Thanks for the video. Yes, it makes sense. I will try this later on this evening. After creating the virtual switches, I will need to figure out how to use them in a automation which uses a thermostat temperature for a trigger.
Since your using the classic app too, you can go to marketplace, smartapps, other, then install the virtual device creator at the bottom of the list. As @Automated_House referenced, it really is the easy way to add virtual switches.