How to wire Sonoff iFan04 on a 5 speed fan

hi guys, I wanted to use my ifan04 on my existing fan/light. My fan existing controller has 2 wires IN and 5 wires OUT (2 for light, 3 for fan), the ifan04 has 2 wires IN and only 3 wires OUT (1 for fan, 1 for light, 1 common).

Does anyone has experience of using the iFan04 on a 5 speed fan ? Thank you.

I think, if it was me, I will not even try. You will lose a lot of functionality. It’s just a wrong combi…

Thanks for your reply. Yeah I understand I will lose the reverse and be only left with 3 speeds. But for problem solving’s sake, can this be done? I would consider giving up some functionality for it to be controlled by google home.

What do the 3 wires for the fan do?

@brianhclo I’ve got 3 iFan04 units and I’ve just switched one of them out to the sonoff D1 light dimmer, which when used with my fans actually gives me granular control (TRIAC variable voltage) instead of just the 3 speeds. I’m going to replace the other 2 iFan units with D1 dimmers now that I know they work.

Note: D1 Dimmer has a max current rating of 1Amp so make sure your fans draw less than that!

iFan units are unfortunately hard-capped at 3 speeds due to the design, they use 2 capacitors to give you the 3 speeds.

Did you manage to control both the fan speed as well as the light using a single D1 ?

No I’m only using my D1s to directly control duct exhaust fans.

Funny, it’s a year later already and everything working fine still with my 3 fans :slight_smile:

I’m trying to buy a fan that I know will work with the iFan04, but all stores selling ceiling fans here in Spain only sell units that already has a remote control, which of course is not HA compatible in any way. Most use 433MHz with a proprietary undocumented protocol.
Is it possible to crack such fans open and completely remove the existing control unit in it, so that all that remians are the bare wires going to the light and the motor?
And the stick the iFan04 in there instead?

I don’t see an issue with that. The 433 units I’ve seen look very similar to the ifan04 in size and wiring.

Well, thank you for stepping in, but on the contrary, all the fans I’ve seen (and opened) are very different from the iFAN04 - this one for example:

@Viking - ifan04 would not work for this one.

A couple of years ago, when ifan03/04 came out, the ceiling fan/light market are mostly using AC bulbs and AC fan motors.

From the label you have above, looks like it is with DC LEDs and a DC fan motor, which is (sadly) more and more common these days. There are no standards for the newer breeds of ceiling fans… every manufacturers do things a bit differently, and you would very likely get a remote. The ifan04 (or ifan03) would not work for those ceiling fans.

You can googling the keywords “AC DC ceiling fan motor”.

Anyways to integrate the newer breeds of DC ceiling fans, you probably would want to approach those from the RF protocols, so either a RF bridge for HA integration, or a doner RF remote w/ an ESP dev board, or… SwitchBots on a doner remote…?

Yes, you’re right. Which I learned the hard way.
My preferred solution would be if a ZigBee ceiling fan existed, or second best, a WiFi fan compatible with MQTT. But I havn’t found anything other than 433MHz systems. And because there’s no standard protocols ever established for 433MHz, it becomes a painful reverse engineering process, if at all possible.
I haven’t found any useful guides on how to interface a ceiling fan to Home Assistant