Have a ceiling fan not connected to any switch, want to make it smartish

Hardware
1

Hi all,

I’ve been messing with Home Assistant recently as I’ll be moving into a condo soon and want to have it set up there.

I noticed in one of the rooms there, they installed a ceiling fan but it’s not connected to any switch, they manually controlled it. I’ve been thinking of a couple options but not sure which one would be the best or if they would even work.

  1. Get a Hue bulb and an Inovelli Red Dimmer Switch. Can the Innovelli switch control bulbs that it’s not directly connected to with the help of Home Assistant? I know I can just mount a Phillips Dimmer to control the bulb but I’d prefer to use an actual switch. The con of this one is I would just deal with using the draw string on the fan itself.

  2. Connect a Sonoff iFan03 to the ceiling fan. Not sure if this would even work without a wall switch. Also seems pretty complicated with desoldering and soldering.

  3. Just get a smart fan.

If there’s another option please let me know.

Thanks.

2

I updated a home depot fan with a home depot Hampton bay wink zigbee controller a while back. I don’t have a link and I’m not sure they still sell them. But it might be an option to look into.

3

The fan itself may not be able to be automated, it depends on the wiring. If you want to make it “smart-ish” then you could put up any automated controller to simply toggle power on and off, but since modern fans have wiring connections to support the light versus the fan speed and yours may not you may be limited in what you can do with what you have.

If it were me I would just buy a new fan with a remote (since you don’t have a switch) and put in a Z-Wave or Insteon fan controller to automate it, then you would also have the benefit of being able to control it easily via the remote if you want.

The idea of a “smart fan” seems like the worst solution to me because often times these are novelties that hook you on the idea that it’s “smart” when you can smarten up any modern fan of your choosing rather than pigeonholing yourself into the select few that are already “smart” on their own.

4

The Insteon controller might be a good option. I think I could then sync the Insteon remote to BOND which I could then control with an Innoveli switch through home assistant automation. I saw talk about an Insteon bridge which might be a decent option since there’s 2 fans like this. I haven’t looked much into the bridge and it’s price though.

I take it I wouldn’t be able to control the light and fan seperately in home assistant though, which would turn me off that.

5

How do they “manually controlled it”?

Dimmers should not be used for controlling fans. Proper fan controls use switched capacitors to control speed.

There is this https://www.itead.cc/smart-home/sonoff-ifan03-wifi-ceiling-fan-light-controller.html or 3A Nue Smart Fan and Light Switch NUE-ZBFLB Zigbee compatibility

6

They use the pull strings on the fan to turn it on and off.

Would the GE Z-Wave fan switch be a good option then?

I was looking at the iFan03 but it seemed pretty complicated. For the price it might be worth at least trying to get set up though.

7

I actually just found the Innoveli Fan & Light Switch and it seems like that might work for me. You put a rf module in the ceiling fan and the switch communicates with that. I’ll have to read up on it more.