Lost Fan Control migrating from Wink

Krishna · May 12, 2020, 7:04pm

I just finished migrating all of my Leviton light switches and Leviton VIZIA RF fan switches to Hubitat. While they all paired just fine and Hubitat correctly recognized the fan switches as controls for a fan, and I can control the fan speed using the Hubitat Dashboard, there is a problem.

When I link Hubitat to Alexa and discover devices, the fan controls all show up, but Alexa only allows me to turn them on or off. Previously when I had Wink I was able to control the speeds by issuing a command that treated the switch like a dimmer (which is how Wink recognized them). But now I can't even do that with Alexa, either with voice or in the Alexa App - the only control available is to turn them on/off.

I'm really disappointed that I seem to have lost this functionality. Is there some way to get it back so that Alexa will let me control the fan speeds? These are 3-speed fans with low/medium/high settings on the switch.

codahq · May 12, 2020, 7:29pm

HE needs to flesh out the cloud integrations a bit with more device types. The Google integration is the same except that most fans at least show up as dimmers so you can adjust the level as a percentage (wrongly because they aren't lights but they show up as them).

If you can stomach it there is a community integration that fixes this on the Google side. You can even add a lot of other types of devices that the OOB Google Assistant integration doesn't support yet. There is no community equivalent for Alexa though. (Alexa sucks anyways. <poke, poke, prod, prod>)

Otherwise, you will have to request an enhancement and hope that in some near-term development sprint they have bandwidth for tweaking the cloud integrations.

Welcome to the community

jrobertson50 · May 12, 2020, 9:34pm

what driver is selected for them in hubitat? i found switching the driver to a generic one or specific one would fix some issues i was having when i moved things over. what is it setup as now?

Krishna · May 12, 2020, 11:44pm

Thanks for your responses.

Regarding the driver, I'm not exactly sure where to find this info, bear with me as I'm a new user. When I go to the list of devices and select one of them, in this case my Game Room Fan, I get this information:

Device Name: Leviton Fan Controller
Type: Leviton Fan Controller (this is a drop down menu)

deviceType: 4097
inClusters: 0x26,0x27,0x2B,0x2C,0x85,0x72,0x86,0x91,0x77,0x73
outClusters: 0x82
deviceId: 820
manufacturer: 29

A "Driver" type is not mentioned, unless it is one of the above bits of data.

I did try selecting "Generic Z-Wave Smart Dinner" next to Type: and then saved it, but when I issued a command via Alexa to change the fan to a specific percent (as I would with a dimmer), it still says the device doesn't support that.

Krishna · May 12, 2020, 11:46pm

I'm rather heavily invested in Amazon Echo at this point, so I don't think I can just change over to Google Home. Isn't that community integration only valid if I'm using Google Home?

aaiyar · May 13, 2020, 12:04am

You can get this to work with Alexa using a kludge - namely:

A single virtual dimmer for each fan
An RM rule that governs what happens when this virtual dimmer is set via Alexa

In brief, here's what you do:

Imagine your fan switch is called "Real Fan". Create a virtual dimmer called "Fan".
Do not not expose "Real Fan" to the Hubitat Amazon Echo App. Instead, expose "Fan".
Create a rule that is like the one below:

Screen Shot 2020-05-12 at 7.02.58 PM

This rule sets "Real Fan" to low, medium, high, or off based on the setting of the Fan dimmer switch (which in turn is set by Alexa).

Edit: So if you told Alexa:
"Set Fan to 50%", it would put the Real Fan on medium.
"Set Fan to 30%" would put Real Fan on low.
"Set Fan to 80%" would put Real Fan on high
"Turn off fan" would turn Real Fan off.

Tim-in-Ca · May 13, 2020, 12:08am

I use Bond and in Alexa I tell her to set the fan to low, medium, high. Now I have a Lutron fan switch to install for a fan that doesn’t have a wireless controller, will have to see how that works.

codahq · May 13, 2020, 1:03am

Yes, but I mentioned it because users sometimes have both. I have both.

Krishna · May 14, 2020, 5:19am

Do you create these rules in Rule Machine using the drop down menus?

I was able to create the virtual versions of each fan using the Add Device / Virtual Device Buttons and selected "Virtual Dimmer" for the type of each. I excluded all the real fans from Alexa and included the virtual fans instead. Now it's the creating the rule part that has me a bit perplexed.

Krishna · May 14, 2020, 5:25am

What is Bond? Other than a fictional MI6 agent, I mean?

aaiyar · May 14, 2020, 12:33pm

Yup - that's the only way available.

Tim-in-Ca · May 14, 2020, 1:39pm

https://www.amazon.com/Automation-Ceiling-Fireplace-through-Control/dp/B071GVGVVH/ref=sr_1_2?crid=2A7Q7QB8948PU&dchild=1&keywords=bond+fan+controller&qid=1589463539&sprefix=Bond+fa%2Caps%2C213&sr=8-2

Krishna · May 16, 2020, 4:49am

How did you get the last line
"If (Fan(off) is off TRUE) Set Fan Speed: Real Fan to off"

Is the last line after the "END-IF" had by selecting Conditional Actions and then IF THEN or Simple Conditional Action? Or is it something else? Do you then select "control switch" which has on/off options or "set dimmers" or something else?

Krishna · May 16, 2020, 4:56am

I was able to create this Rule with your input, for the Master Bedroom Fan which is the virtual dimmer and Master Bedroom Fan Real which is the actual fan control.

I can control the speed and can turn on the fan by asking Alexa to set a speed. However, when I tell Alexa to turn on the Master Bedroom Fan or turn off the Master Bedroom Fan, nothing happens.

What am I doing wrong?

aaiyar · May 16, 2020, 5:23am

Nothing that you've done. It's my mistake. There's an error in the example rule I gave you.
Delete the last line of the actions. And save the rule. Then create a second rule just for on/off actions. I'll post an example in 5 minutes.

Krishna · May 16, 2020, 5:24am

I also tried the same thing my Study Room Fan. For the last line, I'm selecting simple conditional action and selecting the option to turn on/off switches after which I select Study Room Fan which is the virtual study room fan dimmer. But I keep getting:

"If (Study Room Fan(on) is off FALSE) Set Fan Speed: Study Room Fan Real to off"

But I'm supposed to get "(Study Room Fan(off) is off TRUE)" right?

Krishna · May 16, 2020, 5:24am

ok

aaiyar · May 16, 2020, 5:30am

So you in addition to the dimmer rule, for each fan you'll have an on/off rule as well. These will look like this:

Trigger: (use capability switch to create the trigger)

Master Bedroom Fan *changed*

Actions:

IF (Master Bedroom Fan is on) THEN
    On: Master Bedroom Fan Real
ELSE
    Off: Master Bedroom Fan Real
END-IF

That should resolve everything.

Krishna · May 16, 2020, 5:44am

This is what I got... It's still not turning the fan on or off. I selected dimmer for the trigger event and Master Bedroom fan, and then for actions to run I selected Conditional and If/Then...

aaiyar · May 16, 2020, 5:47am

No - not fan speed and not dimmer.

Use the SWITCH capability for the trigger (remember a dimmer is a dimmer, but it is also a switch!).

Also for the actions, treat the Fan controller as a switch (recall, that it too is also a switch).