what version? I’m on: Firmware: 1.10.39 and I’ve been connected since Mar 11.
After 4+ months of my fan being unusable in home assistant, I noticed I got a notification from the HomeKit Controller that a new device was discovered (it was the fan)! I entered the HomeKit pairing code, and it’s all been working as expected for the past hour or so.
I checked in the simple connect app and the fan’s firmware version is now listed as 1.10.41 (it was previously 1.10.39). They must have pushed an update within the past couple days that has seemed to fix the HomeKit connection issues. Fingers crossed.
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I hope that is the case. I have a hunter fan coming to be installed this week. I originally ordered it because it was one of the few brands with well reviewed Homekit support but that was before I was determined to get everything working directly in HA for the extra power it gives me.
I just received two Hunter Fans (Installing within a couple weeks) ill post when i know more… but i have a 3-year-old and a toddler… wish me luck and the free time to do this!
Got my new fan installed today and tried for a few hours to get HA to see it with no luck 
Adds into Homekit just fine but homekit-controller never sees it. And yes I know you can’t have it paired with both at the same time. I only added it to Homekit after giving up on HA to see if it worked and it did.
The pairing process isn’t even some complicated dance. You just press a button on the remote and it goes into pairing mode. Boom Homekit sees it right away. You can see this by tapping on the “use another method” option when asked to scan the device. This opens up a screen where you can choose devices/hubs that are visible and I can see the fan there just fine. homekit-controller though never does
I just wanted to chime in here since I had a Hunter SimpleConnect fan at my old house that I used with Home Assistant for several years. The only issues I ever had with it were of my own making from wonky WiFi/VLAN/mDNS/etc setups–once I had all that correct this fan never missed a beat.
I have only been able to get one fan installed at the new house, but it has also been mostly reliable so far. I think I had this new fan go unresponsive early on when it was still paired with HomeKit before I got my HA instance back online, but since pairing it with HomeAssistant it has been rock-solid for a couple weeks. I am wondering if there some firmware updates recently to explain my early issue with it, but I have not been checking firmware versions and the problem went away for me so I am unsure–it could have just been me fiddling with the WiFi early on for all I know.
Anyway, this is how I’ve always done my pairing with Home Assistant using the HomeKit Controller integration. In my case I have only ever done this with the iOS app–can’t speak to Android unfortunately. I also don’t know what happens when you sign into their account on the iOS app–there could be some issue there so I would suggest signing out if possible.
- Using the Simpleconnect app on iOS, tap ‘Continue with fewer features’ to put the app in HomeKit-only mode.
- Hit the + to pair the fan using Hunter’s documented pairing process–more/less standard to other HomeKit accessories.
- After the fan is on WiFi and paired with HomeKit, go to the Apple Home app, find the accessory, and tap Remove Accessory. This should leave it on WiFi but tell it to be ready for pairing to another controller.
- Go to Home Assistant and it should have discovered the fan immediately. Pair it from there using the setup code with the dashes as specified.
I have actually gone back and forth between real HomeKit and Home Assistant several times without having to reset the fan or reconnect it to WiFi, which is helpful for being able to do firmware updates or change proprietary settings. I’ve used this same approach for other HomeKit-only accessories with great success for several years now.
All that being said, I will add that HomeKit accessories have been incredibly finicky for me in the past when my network configuration was not completely perfect. If you’re having issues that you can’t explain you might want to check to make sure your network is handling multicast traffic appropriately. In my case since I have my IoT devices on a separate VLAN and WiFi network, it’s up to mDNS reflector on my pfSense router to let HA and my phone see the accessories at all. Anything else in your switching/routing/WiFI that might alter how multicast is handled could also cause issues.
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Thank you thank you thank you! This was the missing piece for me! Add it into Homekit and then remove it and boom shows up perfect. I had been trying to add it to HA straight away and it never showed up so I finally gave up and just put it in Homekit and stopped there.
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When I do the process as you stated it seems that the fan drops off WiFi faster than I am able to do the process in Home Assistant. I have the code copied and ready to paste and it does allow me to enter after which I get a progress wheel, but I check my network and see that the fan is no longer connected. Did you not experience this at all?
Unfortunately no. For this fan as well as a few of my other HomeKit accessories just removing them from within the Apple Home app has always left them connected to WiFi and ready to pair to any controller on the network. It usually took me at least a minute or two before I added them in Home Assistant so I assumed they would stay on WiFi and ready to pair but I have not done any extended testing on this to determine a time window. The SIMPLEConnect app (and/or other manufacturer apps) could theoretically tell the device to do a full factory reset when removing them and thus reset the WiFi, but as far as I have experienced doing it from the Apple Home app it has only severed the HomeKit pairing and not the WiFi connection.
Have you seen it drop the WiFi at all when using it natively with HomeKit? If you haven’t checked, I would probably try leaving it on the native HomeKit pairing for a couple days and keep looking to see if it drops out or otherwise misbehaves. That might also give it time to check for firmware updates that may have changed the behavior. It might not help, but at the moment it’s all I can think of.
I suppose I should also note that I do have several Apple TVs and HomePods on my network that are enabled as Home Hubs, and I am using the latest updates for these as well as the latest iOS on my phone. It’s probably not relevant, but it never hurts to be specific in case there are subtle differences that could affect the results.
Otherwise I’m really not sure here. I’m pretty busy for the short-term future here but when I get some time to install the next fan I’ll try to play with it a bit and see if I discover anything else that might help.
After giving up on this for a few months due to sheer frustration, I’ve reattempted.
HA version: 2022.6.6
Fan firmware version: 1.10.41 (it actually shows a version now).
As a note: Added via the Android app (not an Apple device)
I’ve repaired and linked the fan via the SimpleConnect app, and then via HA. HA no longer shows the pairing error message and the fan has been connected for a little bit now (past the 10 minutes it used to lose connection). I’ll update this post if anything changes.
Seems like I was at least partially right a few months ago. There seems to have been some app changes and definitely firmware pushed by Hunter for at least my fan.
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Unsure if #76570 has anything to do with it, but since installing 2022.8.4, my Hunter SimpleConnect Fan has stayed connected for nearly 2 hours now. Couldn’t make it past 20 minutes prior to the upgrade.
Pairing process was to get it on WiFi with the Apple HomeKit Accessory Setup, then use the pairing button on the remote to initiate the HA discovery/addition process. Didn’t do anything special outside of those steps.
Both of my fans go become unavailable every few hours for 5-15 minutes in HA, BUT when I look over AP connectivity logs, there both fans remain connected 100% of the day. Is anyone experiencing this issue?
Ive got another issue. I just installed 2 fans. 1 fan is on like firmware 1.9 im waiting to see if it will update (been out of town a few days) my other fan is on .31 firmware. I did a reset on both of them I can get the one that’s still on 1.9 in HomeKit easily but I can’t for the life of me get the fan on 0.31 to be added back into HomeKit I see its still on the wifi network so maybe I need to kick it off? I have tried to do the reset with the back of the remote but I hold down the button and it never beeps but it does control the fan as it should. Any Help?
With the fans in HA you would lose any way to get Siri to control it right? Still new to HA
You can still get Siri control just not as directly. Home Assistant has HomeKit support in both directions. The ‘HomeKit Controller’ integration allows you to control HomeKit devices, like this fan, in HA. The ‘HomeKit’ integration allows HA to act as a generic HomeKit bridge and can expose anything in HA (that’s supported, anyway) back into HomeKit, so that Siri and the Home app can control it as if it was a native HomeKit accessory. I am doing this with my Hunter fans as well as many other accessories.
As for your issue with the one fan, it can sometimes be tricky to get these things fully reset. They have a guide on their FAQ: https://support.hunterfan.com/hc/en-us/articles/4417356040983-How-do-I-reset-the-Wi-Fi-connection-on-my-SIMPLEconnect-fan- but even with those simple steps, it doesn’t always seem to work 100%. The last fan I installed, I accidentally unpaired the remote trying to reset the WiFi but I eventually got it to work after repairing the remote and trying again. Depending on how you wired the fan, you may need to turn the breaker off so the fan is completely unpowered for at least 10-15 seconds. After turning the power back on, you need to wait at least 10-15 seconds according to them–possibly a bit more from what I remember. But you can’t wait too long–I think this is only possible within a short period of time after the module is powered on (within a few minutes or so, not sure exactly).
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I have not seen mine drop for months now. When HomeKit devices do that, usually that’s an mDNS problem. However, it looks like there was a firmware update earlier this year and several others in this thread were having dropout issues on an older firmware even with WiFi staying connected. I only had it happen to me once back in May/June (not 100% sure which firmware I was on then) but have not seen any issues for the past 4 months on the latest firmware. I would double check for firmware updates first. In HA my working fans are listed with firmware version 1.10.41
Both my devices are firmware .31, maybe that’s the issue.
Ill give that a shot in a few days when I get back from home from my work trip!
Also curious, why would I need to create an mDNS repeater or reflector if everything is on the same subnet?
Sorry if I was misleading somewhere, but you are right: you shouldn’t need an mDNS reflector if everything is on the same subnet. In my case, I run my IoT accessories like this on a separate VLAN, so I use mDNS reflector in pfSense to be able to control HomeKit accessories from my primary network.