Vornado 80x Logic board replacement?

Hardware
1

My basement is cool and upstairs is not… I would like to take a big, high CFM fan and blow that cool air upstairs. Problem is that this fan is dumb, and once it loses power (like on a smart plug), it must be manually turned on. I would like to replace the controller with something smart that could control on/off and speed. Has anyone done this already? If so, please share since I don’t want to re-invent the wheel. Or, if there is another great smart box fan that anyone can recommend I would appreciate that as well.

I am not a rocket scientist but this seems like it should not be that hard for most hardware junkies. This would be my first hardware project BTW…

Thanks in advance

2

You may be able to just short out the fan switch if you cannot leave it permanently on and do the control via the smart switch and automation.

The teardown video (I didn’t watch it, but saw the description on YouBoob) may offer hints as the description says there are five fan windings, which a simple multiway relay board may be able to substitute or bypass. See https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H_hTMvJWfVY for ideas. Your other option is to get a smart unit that already has HomeAssistant connectivity without going down the reverse engineering/ redesign path.

Is passive cooling, using the principles of hot air rising, leaving the doors open and windows closed for airflow, and a wind driven turbine exhaust fan in the ceiling a cheaper alternative? See ‘whirlybird fan’ as well as ‘coolgardie safe’ in your Google search for how my Aussie mates in the OutBack do it, where a 50°C day may get a rare ‘bit warm mate’ comment at the pub as you down the icy schooners after rounding up the cattle with a quad-bike or helicopter all day.

Some middle eastern monasteries are passively cooled by well designed air flow chimneys. Many videos on offer to give you ideas, some which can be retrofitted to existing buildings.

Solar powered fans where the more sunlight, the faster the fan spins is another option.

Reverse cycle air-conditioning combined with zone valves may end up as being your only choice, depending on humidity levels and your ongoing power supply generation and consumption approaches.

Geothermal heating/cooling, relying on the earth temperature being a constant 18°C or thereabouts a few metres underground may also be an option to consider longer term, particularly if the current bout of warm weather may return again more regularly, the weather cycles being 1 (duh!), 3, 7, 10, 50 100 and millennia in cycles, sometimes coinciding to peak.

What color and material is your roof? Reflective and pale can make a significant difference. Is your roofspace a stagnant hotbed of hot air? Let it out with a well placed vent. Can you shade the building from the midday sun by planting trees and creepers?

Befriend your local carpet cleaner or hire a horizontal turbine fan similar to what is used for wet carpet situations where high airflow is used to dry out large water spills on carpet. Allow for hot air exit however, otherwise you have a self perpetuating cauldron.

I was going to wish you warmest regards, but best wishes may be cooler… :wink:

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Ha, great response. I have tried many things including the whole house/attic fan, playing the open/close windows at various times of the day etc., running the HVAC in fan-only mode, and have added a ton of good insulation to my attic. I even tried installing powered vent fans in one room but that did not work well either. My house was built in 1963 and since then the basement was finished and an addition was put on with a ton of west-facing glass. My ductwork is undersized for all the new space.

I got the Vornado fan from Amazon so will see if that works well enough to keep, and to automate. If I go through with the project I will post my results.

I appreciate the link and the ideas.

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Exterior shades… the best time to stop heat is before it enters the house. If you want something nice-looking, use solar screen fabric, if you want something cheap to experiment with use 70-90% gardening shade cloth. I only use them on my 2 most exposed windows and a set of exterior French doors on the SW side of the house, but they make a significant difference.

Regarding the fan conversion project… I would suggest not trying to replace the fan controller, at least not as a first project. A more reasonable project would be to figure out a way to hack the existing controls. I’ve done something similar with a Honeywell tower-style room fan that has digital controls. In my case it was pretty easy because I could just use an ESP32 with a few optocouplers to close the circuit across the existing button pads. You’ll need to spend some time probing the board to figure out what your options are.

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I agree. Quick probing on button/display pcb tells how easy it’s to connect there. If those buttons are just simple “sink to gnd” ones, joib looks pretty straightforward.