Hi everyone,
Hope your 2021 has started well.
I have an indoor pain cave where I bike indoors during winter. I have a large industrial type fan for keeping me cool, and it has 3 fan speeds on it as a switch on the back of the device. I have it currently plugged into a Wemo smart plug so I turn it on 10mins into my warmup. But it means I need to set the speed of the fan in one of its 3 positions beforehand.
I am wondering how would I go about setting it up so that I can choose the speed using the HA app.
- is it possible to take the fan apart and add something to the electronics (I’d prefer something else that won’t result in me setting the house on fire)
- could I set the fan speed setting to its fastest setting, but then have some way of controlling the power going from the plug into the fan, so then I can increase/decrease the fan speed accordingly.
Thanks!
Mostly the speed of the fan is controlled by varying the voltage. For celling fan we already have ready made items like the SONOFF IFan02 or ifan03 but before you use it, please check the maximum current draw of this fan, as it is an industrial fan. In my assumption, the current draw would not be a problem as you have it working with Wemo without any issues. Now with wiring. The second part which is not to open the fan and instead add the ifan module to the input supply of the fan should work in theory. you can try that out first and if there is any issues with control go for opening the fan. There again you can use the same module. You just need to open the regulator part of the fan, find the wire coming from the power supply and the output wire to the fan motor. Make the necessary wiring and take the old regulator out and put the module in its space. Its not a safety concern.
You can buy any such fan controlling module but make sure it has Esp8266 or Esp32 or the model is supported by tasmota or esphome for better integration. Tuya integration also works with most kind of fans.