Fast forward ~ 2 years, Innovelli now is going to roll out (read: pre-order) the blue series switch for fan (only - no light) control.
It is using zigbee, as titled. And, maybe with the feature that Innovelli offers, we could tie double click or long press etc. to control the smart bulb…?
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The Inovelli fan switch looks interesting. It says July early August 2023 release. Still pre-order.
https://inovelli.com/products/blue-series-fan-switch-zigbee-3-0
It doesn’t indicate whether it is an on/off fan switch or speed control. Usually, a fan switch will indicate 3 or 4 speeds.
Any ideas?
I just installed one of these and it connected to my zigbee controller with zero issues. With my ceiling fan with lights, the speed controller for the fan works as expected but the lights are not dimmable. Just on/off for the lights for me. Your ceiling fan might be different.
Receiver with zigby antenna for Gardinier ceiling fan model#43260
from fansandparts.com
Receiver with zigby antenna for Gardinier ceiling fan model#43260 (win – FansAndParts.com
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That’s a good find!!
Are you using Z2M or ZHA?
What are the things (entities and/or services) available in HA?
Does the status of the fan/light got any update accordingly, if/when we control from the remote, which I suppose is RF?
What do you use for the switch(es) on the wall, to go along with this canopy unit?
This appears to be old stock of the discontinued hampton bay/wink controller I mentioned above. It allowed dimming, but actually required changing a dip switch on the remote control to enable the dimming function. Since the one linked doesn’t come with a remote, it seems it would be impossible to set it to dimming . This is the link from its manual discussing it.
On another note, I found that device extremely unreliable (at least in my setup). The device firmware floods the zigbee network with constant messages (anyone using this can enable the logs in their zigbee software to see all these messages). The constant messages and any being dropped caused it to lockup frequently, and its range was awful (my zigbee stick had to be in the same room as the device or it wouldn’t work). It caused my whole zigbee network to be unreliable as well. When it locked up, I had to flip the breaker to get it connect again. Initial pairing was easy, but if it lost connection and needing pairing again, it was a pain as you had to do this 10x toggle thing to reset it at exactly the right speed/sequence. I used it with Wink, Smarthings, and Home Assistant (zzh stick with zigbee2mqtt) and had issues across all platforms. I ended up pulling it out and replacing it - I felt there was a reason it was discontinued.
I have the sonoff ifan04 now- flashed with ESPHome
yep, that is where I got the info to start digging
I was about to hop on and rip a new one as I have had 1 of the gardinier connected for several weeks with no issue and no logging issues that you mentioned…
however…
I just installed 2 more today so I could have all of my fans on the network. The second went fine with zero issues. Problems didn’t arise until I installed my third. Still no problems with the logging issues that you saw…but…it did blow up my zigbee network. None of my zigbee devices would communicate until those fan controllers were turned off. So far I have changed channels on my zigbee controller and now everything but the fan controllers are working. Going to try playing around with the one that was working to see if I can get repeatable errors that I can work with.
Funny enough, I had a similar problem with the ULTRALOQ Z-Wave Smart Lock. At some point it was causing the zwave network to crash.
using the nortek zigbee/zwave combo dongle so I am not sure if it is a fragility in that dongle or if it is a result of those particular products having issues. Will update if I find some answers
You generally won’t see errors in the logs - but if you set them to “debug” you will see these devices constantly are sending their status to the coordinator. At least that’s what I saw in zigbee2mqtt. This constant communication from the device is a problem, especially because you are using the nortek/zigbee combo device. That device has some pretty old specs at this point, and minimal processing power to handle such a chatty device. Many recommend avoiding that combo stick all together- see this post and many others for discussion on that combo stick. I would recommend separate zwave and zigbee sticks - at least that would isolate problems to one or the other, instead of bringing down both networks if the stick locks up.
Running those zigbee fan controllers with your setup is a recipe for disaster.
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This won’t help your immediate need, but just FYI:
Inovelli has a new canopy controller in beta. It is targeted for a 02/2024 release (but targets can move).
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thanks for the tip on the usb stick. I turned on debug but still not seeing the chatter that you saw. I am using ZHA so maybe that is a difference. There was the initial logging items and then it was a polling hit/response every minute for each of the fan controllers and that was as chatty as it got. 
So far to fix the network I have:
- turned HA/proxmox off for an hour (saw that on another post somewhere…)
- unplugged the usb stick for 20 minutes
- changed channels from 15 to 20 and back to 15 with a couple hours in between
- triggered the zigbee “update configuration” between each channel change and restarted ha between each change
- went to sleep
Not sure what combination of things worked but when I woke up everything was talking on the zigbee network as normal and all 3 fan controllers are working fine.
But I still can’t add any new zigbee devices so I think I will get off of the old usb stick and get a split setup for zigbee and zwave. If that doesn’t work either then I have some of the sonoff zbminis that I will try. hooking one up to the lights and one up to the fan should work the same, just more of a pita to manage.
Mine was pretty old, maybe they upgraded the firmware to fix it. If so, that is probably a good sign for you. Also good it reconnected (mine would never reconnect and needed a factory reset when it lost connection). Maybe mine was just defective too.
At this point you can give a better zigbee stick a try and hope for the best.
hello, I’m interested too to this discussion…
someone knows if it would be possible to use an AC light dimmer to regulate the speed of an AC fan?
for instance this one:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005366212710.html?spm=a2g0o.order_list.order_list_main.78.44141451Hw9UqG
as far as imagine, it makes just a PWM, so it should work (but the power consumption of the fan should be <150W of course)
what do you think?
thanks
It might work, but is not safe. Light dimmers aren’t designed for fan loads. You’ll possibly burn out the switch, the fan, or the house.
If it were safe, they would market it as such.
No, there are overheating and fire hazards. Although this post was from Smartthings, it explains why it isn’t a good idea pretty well
Has anyone given thought to using one of the WiFi canopy controllers (around $30 on amazon) along with a Zigbee IR blaster?
While you would still have the Tuya app necessity, perhaps the IR blaster would be sufficient to control everything, due to the IR learning mode?
I have bought two of these for trying to control an IR-only rope lights. The learning mode works, even if you can’t make any sense of the codes received.
https://a.aliexpress.com/_m0LvuSM
I’m going to try that today with the second blaster.
Hello. I have been working with IoT for a couple of years now, first with WiFi, and when my WiFi network was slow and I was worried that I had to send a message to the Chinese site to turn on the light, I decided to adopt a standard. In my case it was Zigbee, which works very well, with a module attached to my homeassistant. But, of course, the problem is the fans. Because I have all the fans with the Zonoff ifan04, with remote control. Everything is fine, but I still depend on China (or somewhere else) to change the speed. So, is there a complete replacement for the ifan04 (with 3 speeds, light and remote control), that uses Zigbee instead of WiFi? I have been reading everything above, but I understand that many are still trying to get the ifan to work. I have already gone through that (4 fans). I also have the 2 blinds controlled by another component, which I will see about changing later (but, the blind is more delicate, with the motor and the stops). I’d rather sort out the fans first. And I’m not convinced about having to use tasmota (unless there’s no other option). Any ideas?
My 2 cents as a Home Assistant newbie (almost a year in)…I have 2 Inovelli Zigbee canopies. Works well for me. My ceiling fans are off-the-shelf Hunter models from a big box store.
Have you considered jailbreaking your ifan04, using ESPHome firmware? Or maybe you have tried that already?
Otherwise, yes the Inovelli canopy module is the way to go. I have 3.
I’m not sure what you are referring to but my iFan04’s have worked for years with HA locally using ESPHome.
They are fairly easy to flash with a cheap UART adapter (search for FTDI 232). There is a complete dedicated thread to getting them to work with ESPHome.
It’s way cheaper to try this inexpensive adapter solution than to replace all of your fan controllers. Then if it doesn’t work all you’ve lost is some time and the few dollars for the adapter.
Hello! Well, I come from the software side, and even though I can handle electronics, everything is always expensive in Argentina, and ruining a device due to bad operation hurts us to the core. That said, could you point me to a post that really explains how to update the firmware of the ifan04 safely? Because that’s the idea, right? I have bought the controls that communicate via rf to the ifan04. Would this also continue to be available after the update? My idea, to test all this, is to buy a new ifan04, because I need the ones I have working with their original ewelink software (we are now entering summer, here, in the south). Well, I hope I have explained myself.