I have several DC ceiling fans that are operated with RF remotes, which I would like to integrate into Home Assistant.
Is anyone aware of any DC fan controllers that work with Z-Wave or Zigbee (or wifi as last resort)? I’ve found a couple of smart fan controllers (e.g. Sonoff iFan) but they all appear to be for AC fans.
Of course the other possibility is using an RF bridge but it could bring th fan and HA out of sync relatively easily (unfortunately, a few of the fan features are toggled on and off with the same remote control button).
Any luck with this? I have essentially the same controller (Model number on mine is listed as JF980RS-BW but has same diagram) and am trying to replace it with something that allows two-way communication.
I have two fans that use that same model of remote. We bought the fans at the same time, and are the same brand, however they seem to function differently with their remotes.
One of the first things I realized is that the remote seems to store the “state” of the fan. I had assumed that the “fan speed up” button would send the same command each time you pressed it, and the fan would handle the request accordingly.
However, I realized the remote was handling state and, therefore, if you pressed “fan speed up” multiple times, it would send the RF signal for “fan speed 1” and then “fan speed 2” and so on.
After much trial and error, I finally got one of the two fans working perfectly. However, the other fan seems to behave entirely different. From what I can tell, the remote sends its ENTIRE state when you press any button. Which means, when you learn the command for, say, “fan speed up” it’s also sending the state of the light. Meaning I cannot train my Broadlink to JUST adjust the fan speed, as it will also send the light’s state and turn the light off or on.
The other difference between the two is that, for the first one, I was able to gaurantee the light state because the “light up” and “light down” command always turned on the light, regardless of whether the light is on or off. Meaning my “light on” command actually sends the “light brightness up” command and the “light off” command actually sends the “light brightness down” command, immediately followed by the “light toggle” command. However, this second fan doesn’t do anything with the “light brightness up” and “light brightness down” command unless the light is already on.
EDIT:
Because the Broadlink RM4 Pro requires you to press the desired button multiple times so it can “learn” the code, training it was impossible with the fan’s remote–as the “+” button sends different commands based on its current state. So what I had to do was use my Flipper Zero as a middle-man. I would have the Flipper copy the raw output of “+” (the first time I pressed it) and then used the Flipper to repeatedely play that command to the Broadlink (so that the Broadlink could learn it). Then repeated that for each “+” command (from 1-9)
