Hey Everyone,
I’m helping out a friend get started with Home Assistant. They have existing radio remote-controlled fans from Fanimation. I looked up the remote specs and they use the 304Mhz band. This locks out popular remote devices like the Broadlink RM4 Pro (the device I use for my fans).
What remote devices can Home Assistant use to control Fanimation fans?
Here is the current remote:
This device can handle the frequency, but the trick is to get it into HA.
https://greatscottgadgets.com/yardstickone/
Interesting!
If it works on those frequencies, that would be the first step. Ya, the next would get it working with HA and then getting HA to learn the commands for the fans. At $130 for the radio setup, that’s kind of a steep bet that it will work.
Has anyone gotten this device to work for them? Does anyone know of a more affordable, more certain device?
Thanks again for the suggestion!!
It is expensive, but once you try something different than 433MHz or 2.4GHz, then the options drops dramatically.
The YardStick one have several examples of usage in HA, so it do work.
Some say the Bond Bridge works, some say it doesn’t. Does anyone have experience with this device? They have an FCCID checker, but it is broken right now.
I’ve got one of these fans and even wasted good money on that wifi controller. Apparently the only ‘authorized’ way to integrate natively is through IFTTT or Alexa, both which option I find unappetizing as it’s cloud only and no way to talk to the device locally.
I contacted Fanimation-support a while back, who turned out to be a bunch of knuckleheads insisting on how great their cloudcrap was and refused to divulge any technical details neither about the hardware nor their cloud. I could have settled for a cloud API, but nooo! ‘our fan app is so great and our cloud behind it’s oh-so-super-secret’. FU guys.
So, since discovering that my RM4 Pro is useless against this POS fan controller too, As soon as I’m done with my irrigation system, I’m breaking out the soldering iron and and building my own Wemos D1 based controller, butchering the fan remote and soldering control wires directly to the pads. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, Fanimation. I reject yer silly walled garden and will substitute it for my own, hah!
Basically what I want is to be able to control on/off, direction and speed. The other timer junk the remote offers, I think most of us would prefer doing ourselves in HA
Btw, while I got nothing against ESPhome, I’m mainly a Tasmota guy so if I get this thing put together, perhaps someone in a similar boat would care to work with me on a suitable Tasmota template?
Turns out the Bond Bridge worked like a champ with these fans. FYI
Did you complete the fan controller conversion? I have one too and entertaining the idea and wanted to see if you had any learnings.
Thanks!
Hi Jason, the fan conversion got bumped far down the list due to a house purchase, but since you ask, I might just revisit the topic. While I’m sure the Winbond works fine as mentioned above, purchasing a $100 solution for a fan seems a little over the top
Hi Max
I haven’t thought about this fan all winter and here we are in spring. Turned it on today and need to change the rotation direction. “Hey kids, where’s the fan remote?”. Lost in the abyss.
Anyway, I remembered we had exchanged a couple comments and came to see if your fan mode made it up the priority list.
Hi Jason, naw still haven’t gotten around to properly dealing with it as another prerequisite injected itself in the list: As it turns out my Fanimation remote has horrible range, even with fresh batteries. Tried changing the channel via the dipswitches too. It has to be held within 3 feet to reliably work. Thus, said controller I’m contemplating needs to be installed in the attic right above the damn thing to reliably work. And there’s the rub, need to install a new attic hatch to get up there…
I can’t seem to win, lol
If you want to control the fan, assuming it’s a the fanimation DC Bluetooth. I created a java a that connects using a rPi 3B+ device.
I’ll probably try and do something with MQTT but this is my first project.
Currently you can control the fan via command.
