I haven't even had a chance to try the new release but am excited by what I've seen about the new Room Lighting App and Bond Integration. Great to see such big stuff in each release, major platforms being added and major built-in apps added.
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I was reading about some of this and it occurred to me that there is a growing list of user friendly Automation Simplifications that are worth highlighting in advertising. I hope/expect that they will.
Notice the trend? Pushing out the envelope of who can use the hub has to be a core goal. However, no matter how good a job at that we do, home automation is still generally difficult by its nature.
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Now we need a good ceiling fan control app 
What does that mean? You want something more than stepping through the speeds with a button push? If so, what??
I have no idea to be honest. But maybe something that’s based on temperature, time, presence based and mode
And integration of wifi fans that don’t have native integration yet. So may control them via virtual switches
Thank you! This is very helpful
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Just keep in mind that fans don’t have any impact on the temperature In a room. Using motion/occupancy to make sure the room is occupied makes a lot of sense though.
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Deleted - I was being too pedantic/off-topic.
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Really nice work @bravenel with the apps to bring HA closer to the masses. I tried your new room lighting app and decided it was not really for me because I'm comfortable with the full blown Rule Machine and have fine tuned my smart home with some fairly complex automations that the new app can't quite handle. But then I realized you didn't write this for people like me. I love what you are doing to make HA more available to others. Keep up the great work.
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you just need some AI lol
Yes they do
.i.have a rule that turns fan on.high when window ac turns on
The calculation helps cool when coupled with ac.
Your fan isn’t decreasing the temperature in the room, your a/c is. The fan is moving the air in the room around.
On their own, fans do not cause the room temperature to change. They make people feel cooler because moving air evaporates sweat on your skin more effectively than air that isn’t moving.
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No sh-*
But without fans we wouldn't have much cooling. All ac systems basically use fans. And you.said they don't have an impact and not that they dont cool..i.am saying they have an impact which is distributing the cool air so its not all in one place.
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I did not. Someone else did. And with respect to ceiling fans, which is what was being discussed, it’s essentially true. Ceiling fans make people feel cooler through convective and evaporative heat loss, not by changing (i.e. impacting) the temperature in the room. Unless there’s also an a/c in the room, but you were the first person to mention a/c in addition to ceiling fans.
This is fairly pointless though, so have a nice night.
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YES absolutely! Here’s a specific blueprint….
@Bravenel, I created a set of 4-5 rules that work in tandem to automate a given room’s ceiling fan. The concept is to control the fan through a virtual thermostat by way of its cooling setpoint. The components are:
- A rule that syncs the fan thermostat’s temperature attribute based on one or more temp sensors in the room
- A rule that toggles the fan thermostat’s mode (off or cool) based on the combination of a room occupancy flag (managed separately) and a room override flag (a Boolean hub variable that can deactivate all the room automation — handy for a variety of things, esp. motion lighting)
- A rule that manages the actual ceiling fan’s operating state and speed based on the fan thermostat’s operating state.
- A rule that syncs the fan thermostat’s mode and operating state if a person physically commands the fan, keeping the fan therm and ceiling fan in sync.
- Finally, we have a rule that activates and deactivates the room automation override based on certain events in the room — still playing with this
@mbudnek inspired the above, so I should give him the credit. I used a super app he built for awhile (here) but then discovered I wanted more control, so I used RM5.1 to cobble together the above. It works just fine. And we like it quite a bit. But I do wonder if the need is somewhat universal then perhaps Hubitat or someone groovy-savvy (rules me out) couldn’t replace my work with a more elegant app.
Food for thought….
