I am totally new to smart things. But I recently bought my first smart things controller and plan to tie it into my amazon echo’s.
I have done a ton of reading on how to hook up a ceiling fan that uses RF to a smart things controller. For some background I have a few Hunter Fans in my house that each tie into a single switch on the wall for power. The wall switch only does power, nothing else. In order to turn the fan or fan light on I have to use the remote. The RF remote uses 350hz frequency.
From what I have read I can buy a cheap remote for around $20 on ebay or amazon then take it apart to wire it up to an Arduino board and Arduino Shield in order to communicate with my smart things controller.
I am wondering is this the easiest way for me to control my fans thru the controller, as in there are no easier alternatives? Also I could not figure out which Arduino board I should buy, nor can I find any tutorial or video or pictures on steps to do.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance!
tgauchat
(ActionTiles.com co-founder Terry @ActionTiles; GitHub: @cosmicpuppy)
2
The Thing Shield is compatible with Arduino Uno (or 100% compatible clone). I believe it fits Leonardo and others, but they are not the “standard” Arduino it was designed for.
For an uncoded simple remote control, I’d recommend using RF module for your Arduino (an sender + receiver kit is ~$12), that way you don’t need to hardware hack into a “cheap remote”). Be sure to get the right frequency … usually 433mhz or 315mhz. You need the receiver module only to “learn” the code that you will send with the sender.
If you still want to go with the remote controller hardware hack option (i.e., “zombify the remote”), you can use a couple cheap 5v DC relays (one for each button on the controller).
I built RF controller for my projector screen (up, down, stop), so I can share that code if the above makes sense.
@tonydt1g3r the code on Git is old and I redid the eagle file. I’m off on Sunday and will update my code. I researched a lot of different ways to control my fans and the photon is the best ways I found, better then the smartthings shield and arduino.
thanks for the heads up. I’ll look into the photon.
It looks a lot cheaper.
So correct me if I am wrong but all I need is this $19 photon, wireup the remote to the pins on the photon and program it up. I could use a USB wall charger to power it and place this thing anywhere?
This is my git code and eagle file for my project. I have a Photon on the eagle board with a Cat5 cable connected to my Hampton Bay Controller. I didn’t put together a parts list yet, on another day I can. About to start installing my new ecovent system. Enjoy
So Tom sent me one of his extra eagle boards, and his code. I wanted to also have a light control in my the app so I altered his code and took out the low fan speed and used it to control the light instead. Since I couldnt figure out how to get the extra 3rd pin wire he had to function right.
All in all it works, however I am not sure why the light is half lit when plugged in as shown in the picture. I can control up to 3 fans with the way I have it wired.
Big thanks to tom for all the help and code.
My modified code is at
Eagle is the software, you get the board printed by someone else. If you go to Tom’s github I think he has the schematic posted. You should try and message Tom directly when you order them you have to order them in lots of 3 I think he prob has one extra still.
