There are 7 wires coming down from the fan into the anderic control unit. Black, White, Blue, Red, Pink, Yellow, Grey. Let’s leave blue and white on the side for a moment since I am guessing these are for controlling the light (on/off). I guess the way it works in the original set up is that the control unit is supplied power (through the black wire) and depending on the setting the relays into the unit return low/medium/high power back into the fan through one of the other wires (Red/Pink/Yellow/Red). I guess maybe the Red is used to change the direction though ? I have looked online for the wiring schematics and cannot find anything on what the colors of the wires are.
The iFan03 is now mounted directly into the power source (picture 1) and will supply the speed setting through its own relays. Therefore I need to figure out which wires to connect together at the bottom of the fan (picture 2). I have tried connecting black/yellow, black/pink, black/grey but get no movement of the fan. I have not tried black/red, nervous about that one… might create a short ?
I am wondering if I am missing something with the white wire, right now, I have not connected it with anything ?
I just finished this exact project yesterday with full success except with tasmota. My guess is that those are the capacitor wires from the original fan. Some controllers have them built into the RF control unit and others are wired outside of housing. yours being the latter. The ifan has built in caps for the speed outputs. However!! if this is an install in North America you will likely need to upgrade your caps. That being said you have a set of caps there to swap out. I also had to trim the case down to slide into my fan housing the same as you did.
Thanks @vrt. I was thinking the capacitators were in the control unit (the one I provided a link to in the OP) and that the power was fed back to the fan using either one of the return wires. For instance Pink would be low speed, grey medium speed and yellow high speed ?
Thanks @HakaToph, sounds promising, I am away at the moment but will try as soon as I get back and report back here. Keep me posted on progress and if you have finished the install successfully
Did you flash it with ESPHome or Tasmota. I have flashed mine with ESPHome, i had trouble finding the right GPIOs, but I think I finally did, although of course not tested with the fan just yet…
@HakaToph : it worked ! I had to improvise a bit, but it’s up and running, thanks so much !
If it is helpful to someone else, the connections are as follows
Black (iFan03-out) --> Red + Yellow
White (iFan03-out) --> Pink + White (Cap) + White + Extra White (for lights)
Red (Cap) --> Grey
Extra White --> White (to lights attachment)
Blue --> Blue/Black (to lights attachment)
When following directions from the video, it indicated the Pink needed to be connected to the Black and the yellow to the White. I followed that but my fan was pushing air up. It also said to reverse to change the direction, so I swapped Yellow and Pink and now the fan pushes air down, which is what I needed.
Oh, also, when the fan light relay is on, the light is off and vice-versa, so I need to update the config in ESP Home to reverse that…
Additionally, I need to figure out how to build a template to show that fan as a “fan control”…
And finally to all the electricians/electrical engineers out there : can someone confirm the need for the extra Capacitator in the circuit ? What would happen if I removed it ? I have no clue of course (am a business major), but the “low” is super low and the high seems to be lower than what it was before, so I am thinking that the iFan03 already has capacitators and maybe the additional one is dampening the power one additional level and is unnecessary ? OK, maybe that’s dumb…
I also found that I had to swap Yellow and Pink compared to the directions.
I am running Tasmota and MQTT with home assistant “iFan02” config to control it. On/off, speeds and light work as expected, and now integrated into google home assistant for voice commands.
The fan does require the capacitor to run. What is going on is in the iFan03 unit has capacitors matched for 220V market! There is a fix though, that requires swapping out the capacitors for higher capacity (5uF) caps, this will fix the low speed. I ordered mine the other day, supposedly they are same dimensions which should make swapping them easy to do.
I installed the iFan03 on my ceiling fan, and just came across this post (and a few others) about replacing the capacitors on the iFan board. Out of curiosity, what happens if you choose not to replace the capacitors? Is it unsafe to run it with the existing ones?
Disclaimer: I am not an electrician of any sort…I got it to work with the instructions in this thread but the speeds never got right. Low was super low, almost useless, medium was “low” and high was meh…To be clear I did not replace the caps in the iFan03, only changed the cap from a 4.5uF to a 5uF. If there was any change it was not noticeable…not sure if @HakaToph got his delivery by now and can add.
hi @mviamin
I have the same issue except only low was super low but medium & high are fast as expected.
Could you be more specific on which cap you change to 5uF?
240v is the default voltage in my country btw
my original fan double capacitor was a 1.2uF and 2uF
so what i did was removed the 2 capacitors on the iFan4 and replaced with a double-capacitor of a different rating (https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1250974303.html?spm=a2g0o.order_list.order_list_main.5.15581802no7l66)
I bought the 1.2 + 0.8 uF double capacitor from above link.
in place of C1 was 1.2uF line, in place of C2 was connected to 0.8uf line.
this will achieve 1.2uF with low, 2uF with mid & max speed is as per usual.
this worked as relay 1 & 2 are active when in middle speed, so capacitors in parallel are additive (1.2+0.8), thus achieving the original speed as intended.
might create a short ?
