Modern Forms Smart Fans - Integration

Third party integrations
#82

I bought a modern forms fan in July of 2020. After much struggle to get it installed in a high ceiling, i found it would drop off the network a lot and i would re-add it through the app many times. That was before i had home assistant.

Modern forms sent me 2 replacement wifi modules and one new wall control (They said my second wifi module was incompatible with the wall unit). I was really ready to give up on this fan. I talked to a few different people in modern forms fan support and finally a new person started on the support team and promised to help me get my fan working properly. At this point the fan was staying on wifi pretty well, but if i turned it off and tried to start it from the alexa, it would struggle to start and not actually move and just make clicking noises. If i got a stick and gave it a little push it would start spinning, I sent this to support and told them i suspect the motor was bad. They said no it is a firmware issue, and a new firmware would be released soon. I kind of lost interest in the fan at this point because it was so much trouble, but a few months later i realized the fan was working perfectly and was solid for months. Because of all the issues, i would only control the fan through alexa. I would not open the app on phone or use the wall control. It worked fine for months this way. I think i remember that if i even open the modern forms app on my phone or use the wall control, the fan would drop off wifi sometime later.

Then i started to use home assistant and found this great add on (Thank you!). But as soon as i started using it my fan started dropping off the network several times a day and require i pull the air gap to get it back on wifi again. So my situation sounds like what has been described here. I deleted the add on and i am going to reset the fan and see if it stays on the network for a few days, If it works fine then i will reinstall the add on and try to change the polling interval and setup the auto reboots and see how that goes,

Thank you for this add on! I don’t think my recent issues are because the add on is bad, i just think these fans are VERY finicky and develop problems for the least little thing. Hopefully i can get it figured out.

If the fan wasn’t so hard to install, i would have taken it down and sent it back a long time ago. Way too much trouble for a simple fan. I do like the way it looks and being able to control it through alexa when it will stay on the network.

#83

With the newest firmware, my fans still drop off, but much less often. I reboot 1X per day.
BTW, do others find the “firmware update” is a joke? When the controller announces that a firmware update is available, I select the update option. Then the spinning wheel stating “Updating firmware” goes around and around…never stops. In the end, the firmware does not update this way.

I have had success pulling the airgap on the wall switch with the app open and when I plug t back in it seems to update.

#84

I THINK your solution for all problems is to implement icemarkom’s automations that reboot your fans 1 to 3 times per day. It may fix all of your problems.See this post

#85

Thank you for your response. I will try the automations over the weekend and report back. The fan has been kind of stable the last 2 days but i have a feeling it will act up again.

#86

icemarkom:
Are you able to determine the command that the native app sends to the fan to enable “breeze” mode? And the values that are sent for “forward”: and “reverse”?

I am just now getting around to updating the custom component for the MF fans. Thought I would add the ability to set direction and turn on breeze mode if possible.

This next month is a bear for me so I will probably not complete this until May. My python programming is slow at best. But let me know if this is doable.

Paul

Modern Forms add additional modes (breeze mode)
#87

Sure thing I can work to figure out that stuff.

Though, instead of starting from scratch (which also may not be a terrible idea), I think perhaps we could focus to improve @jimpastos’s integration. There has already been some work done back in January, and it’s a lot more versatile now than it was. I filed several issues yesterday, and will do a few more.

We don’t need a new integration I thing, we just need to make this one even better! :slight_smile:

#88

Probably useless information, but I have been using this integration completely issue free for about 1.5 months now on version 3dec511 installed through HACS.

It did not connect to my fan at all via Docker running on Synology with similar errors to the early posts in this thread. I spent months and months failing to make a proper connection—but after purchasing and migrating via backup to a HomeAssistant Blue, everything began working and I have not had a single failure.

I have a Wynd 42 on firmware 01.03.0025 / 01.03.1008
It is connected through a Ubiquiti Unifi WI-FI network (in case this helps solve any issues with frequent disconnects—I have seen none)

#89

Hey mark, did you guys ever get this working correctly?

#90

Negative, but also, in the meantime… there is now the official Modern Forms integration for Home Assistant, which seems to work mostly fine.

2 Likes
#91

“Mostly?”……….

#92

Well… yeah :-). Nothing is ever perfect. I have a few small nits about it, but I had no time to file issues and even less to try and fix it myself.

Specifically, for my particular fans, which have no lights, it still detects them as having lights. Also, it creates additional entities, which confuse the brains of Google Assistant (which, saddens me to say, isn’t actually hard, but that’s a separate topic).

#93

Thank you. Atleast it doesn’t drop

#94

I recently installed 3 Modern Forms Zephyr fans and I want to control them through HA. I am new to HA. My plan is to control each fan with its own IKEA Tradfri remote. I managed to get those paired with a Zigbee radio and via the developer event listening tool I know they are working with my HA installation.

Anyway, I have some questions related to the fan:

  • When I do a factory reset can I expect that the fan will unpair from my wifi network and return to “access point” mode (announcing a name like ModernFormsFan_xxxxxx)?
  • Am I better off using the vendor app “properly” (create a login, fully use the phone app) or can I get away with doing equivalent things via curl POSTs? It seems the main need is to join the fan to my home wifi and from what I’ve seen there is a curl command (described here: Modern Forms fan IP control - cmb) that would accomplish this task.
  • Once the fan is joined to my wifi network how do I update the fan’s firmware? My guess is with the phone app – but does this then require a modernforms account?
  • Does anyone know if the manual “join wifi network” curl command still works with recent firmware versions? My up-to-date fans are running version 02.00.0026.

Thank you,

#95

Answers to the above questions (to the best of my knowledge!):

  • When I do a factory reset can I expect that the fan will unpair from my wifi network and return to “access point” mode (announcing a name like ModernFormsFan_xxxxxx)? ==> Yes
  • Am I better off using the vendor app “properly” (create a login, fully use the phone app) or can I get away with doing equivalent things via curl POSTs? It seems the main need is to join the fan to my home wifi and from what I’ve seen there is a curl command (described here: Modern Forms fan IP control - cmb) that would accomplish this task.
  • Once the fan is joined to my wifi network how do I update the fan’s firmware? My guess is with the phone app – but does this then require a modernforms account? ==> I installed on app first (so I could update firmware, etc.) then run though HA
  • Does anyone know if the manual “join wifi network” curl command still works with recent firmware versions? My up-to-date fans are running version 02.00.0026. ==> I have not used this approach so I do not know
#96

I can’t find a better place to ask so I’m going to ask here and maybe someone will help me out.

  1. Is the Modern Forms official integration fully local? Is it using WiFi for local? Or is it cloud based?

  2. If fully local, can I use it just as another device? As in set up timers and other automation based on the entities it finds? Sorry, still very new at HA.

  3. Is there a delay between using HA and the fan receiving the command? I saw that there was a 60 second delay, I don’t want that.

Thanks!

#97

I don’t believe it runs local, as the one fan I have with this integration loses cloud connection and then loses connection to Home Assistant at the same time. It tends to happen every couple months and just has to be powered off and on at the switch.
Reaction time to Home Assistant commands are fast for me, one second or so. It also works in automations.

#98

Thank you.

Can anyone else please confirm that there is no local option for the Modern Form integration?

#99

It’s fully local.

1 Like
#100

That’s good to know. I guess when my fan loses cloud connection it’s losing signal completely. A bit irritating since it’s 20 feet from my router, but it’s easy enough to kill the power and turn it back on.

#101

Just tested the Modern Forms Integration by disconnecting router from the internet, and I still have full local control over wi-fi. My response time when sending on/off commands is less than one second.

I like that the fan doesn’t beep when changing speeds via HA as it does when using the vendors remote. I have an automation in Node Red that sets the fan speed as soon as it’s turned on based on the temperature range of other sensors in HA. My fan has 6 speeds that you set as a percentage (16,33,50,66,83,100). The fan entity does have an option to reverse the rotation.

The other entities automatically created are for “Adaptive Learning” and “Away Mode”. There’s also 2 additional entities that are either “Unknown” or “Unavailable”, which are “Fan Sleep Time” and “Fan Sleep Timer Active”.

I don’t see any way to update the firmware in HA, so that would need to be done initially via their cloud app. For the cloud app you can either create an account or use Google, Apple or Facebook Authentication.

I really like these fans and would purchase more as the need arises.