Mr. Ken Fan integration - Any experience?

Third party integrations
1

Anybody with experience about how to integrate a Fan from Mr. Ken brand?

Basically it is a Fan with AC motor and 433MHz Remote. The manufacturer has no experience about how to integrate their devices.

Fan without light, only switch on/off, 6 speed levels.

2

Unless the manufacturer tells you, there is some reverse engineering in your future. There are may instances documented in these forums of the process, some more elegantly than others. It is achievable. There are a number of approaches you can take. All involve research and lots of time, and a close eye looking for patterns that are consistent is very useful. You can imitate the remote electronically, imitate button presses on the remote by adding electronics to it, or change the destination end electronics on the fan. Each approach has their own challenges and attractions.

Manufacturers can lose sight of the benefits their product sales can bring by releasing such information to boost their sales where they can be integrated to home automation.

Hint: Mr Ken - boost your profits! People like to see modern products that will integrate well into their home automation. Keeping this secret won't survive reverse engineering for long. If you release the codes or protocol used, you will save your tech support team a lot of grief, as well as enjoy increased sales. Your resellers will love you.

The recent RF additions to ESPHome may offer some scope for integration of your device to HomeAssistant.
Happy reading.

You could disassemble your remote to find which chip scans the pushbuttons, and either press the buttons electrically with an electronic interface using FETs, transistors, relays or some other interface to your own controller chip such as an ESP32 or nRF52840 as well.

Most vendors take the easy way out, using the sample code from the SDK released for their remote controller chip. The chances of you using the same codes as the SDK ones and finding they work are very high.

If you know the protocol it would make it simpler. Is the RF traffic one way or two way? This may affect your choice of components and your strategy, if you are just duplicating the remote control button values transmitted, using your own transmitter to emulate a remote control. This is how vendors such as Broadlink or Bond have achieved widespread use of their add-on products, supporting many brands and protocols.

Often the codes and protocols are generic, so easy to implement. You could even cycle through the popular ones and maybe find one that works.
See Remote Transmitter - ESPHome - Smart Home Made Simple

Your other option is to substitute the electronics that drive the motor. As you haven't specified the model other than to say it is AC, and not the voltage and frequency, not much further assistance can be suggested at this stage.

I'm assuming you want to persist with this, rather than just go buy another brand that has this challenge already solved, and are happy to document your progress here for the benefit of others

Let's get some more information first.

Can you start here:

  1. Tell us the model. Don't assume we know.
  2. Is there an FCC:ID? This can lead to associated documentation that can offer clues.
  3. A close up picture of the front and back of the remote, both outside and inside of the circuit board (4 photos), and a closeup of the larger chips on the circuit board would help immensely. A closeup of the sticker on the fan that has the model number and voltage etc would also help. They need to be clear and focused and readable to be of use in helping you.
  4. If you haven't installed the fan yet, a closeup photo of the circuit board would be nice, especially as it may offer clues to the chips involved in decoding the 433Mhz signal, as well as the method of driving the fan motor. Sometimes there are two, one for the smarts, and the other for the fan control.
  5. The website url which has the exact model from Mr Fan so we can see if their support section or user manual has any existing clues.
  6. Have you asked the vendor, specifically, what protocol Mr Fan uses? Refer them to this thread so they know it will be documented if we follow through with laying open their engineering efforts, both hardware and software. Obscurity will not hide their engineering.
  7. If you can't be bothered with the challenge or are out of your depth, and are going to use something like a RM4 Pro from Broadlink to integrate into HomeAssistant (if it is supported), let us know as well.

If the end result is home automation interoperability, including HomeAssistant integration and possible Matter/Thread support for their products, can you see why this would be something that Mr Ken would also like to achieve?

Nothing in this thread is unique to MrKen so far. It applies to any remote controlled item, whether it be via RF (radio frequency) or IR (InfraRed) or other techniques. If it can be inspected, or intercepted, than it can be decoded or imitated.