Relative newbie here, still trying to make his HA installation more useful.
A few days ago I was thinking about this use case: how about controlling the bathroom fan? So I have a monitored (temperature, humidity) bathroom with an exhaust fan. When showering the humidity goes into the 90+ % zone. The fan is controlled by the same 2 way switch that controls the light, so sometimes we accidentally turn off the fan before the humidity gets back to decent levels.
So I was thinking of either putting a relay next to the fan or changing the wall switch with something remotely controllable so that the fan could stay on as long as it needs. I must mention that the fan gets power all the time and it will run a few minutes after its switch was turned off.
As far as I have read around I would have 3 control options: WiFi, Zigbee or Z-Wave and probably WiFi would be the easiest to start with (sonoff relays?).
I also must mention my plans for the future: upgrading the window blinds to electric, swapping the heaters’ thermostats for electro valves and maybe replacing all the wall switches for something controllable. I am mentioning these plans because I am thinking that an unitary system would be advantageous.
Also, I would like to stay as offline as possible, maybe even avoiding WiFi altogether. And while talking about WiFi, the 10+ neighboring networks might have a saying it choosing something else (I live in a pretty dense house/apartment complex). My contribution to the neighborhood is about 5+ WiFi devices on all the time (I try to use cable as much as I can).
So what should I choose? What would be the recommended path? Any suggestions would help me steer to the right direction.
Thank you!
PS: Are there any electro-mechanical in-wall switches, something that would allow both manual action but also remotely controllable, maybe even one that would flip the mechanical switch based on the remote command received? I’ve seen some capacitive touch ones, but I like the good old mechanical and optical feedback. (I bet there are, I just want confirmation)
PS2: In case it matters, I live in Germany.