Probably a good idea, especially if electrical work is not something your an expert at. Safety is always the number 1 priority!
I do have a scenario similar to yours. I chose to implement the Hampton Bay Zigbee Fan/Light controller (HBFC). Hubitat has built-in support for this device. My fan is a simpler/older 'pull chain' design. Here's what I did...
- Added a Lowes IRIS outlet as a Zigbee Repeater to the same room as the fan (don't skip this step, as a repeater is really a necessity with this fan controller!)
- Installed the HBFC in my fan's canopy. It needs 120VAC power as an input, and has an output for the fan and another for the light.
- After pairing the HBFC with Hubitat, and making sure I could control both the fan and light, I removed the light switch and tied LINE and LOAD together with a wire nut. (i.e. always ON power to the HBFC.)
- In the place of the old light switch, I added a Lutron Pico remote (5 button model). I programmed this remote to allow me to control both the Light and Fan via Hubitat. I can control the dimmer and fan speeds from this one Pico as well.
So far, it has worked very well. I can still use the remote control that comes with the Hampton Bay Zigbee Fan Controller. The one thing that is hard to know exactly is what speed the fan is set to. I use the round middle button on the Pico to cycle through the fan speeds (similar to pulling the motor speed chain.) So, I added some Rule Machine logic that sends a text to speech command to my Google Home Mini via the Google Home Assistant integration. This way, any time the fan turns on, off, or changes speed, we get an audible feedback.
The really amazing part, is that the Lutron Pico and HBFC were able to be used during the recent Hurricane Florence power and internet outage we experienced. My generator was able to power the the house's 110VAC loads, and that ceiling fan came in very handy without air conditioning for 5 days!
Hope this at least gives you some additional ideas. I think you may be able to buy a new ceiling fan that comes with the Hampton Bay Zigbee Controller already integrated. That may be a good option for you if you don't already have the fan. It would definitely allow for more flexibility.
Here's the Hampton Bay Zigbee Fan Controller add-on module
Home Depot also sells a bunch of 'Wink Enabled' Ceiling Fans that come with this preinstalled, I believe.
To control everything with Hubitat, I use @stephack's awesome Advanced Button Controller (ABC) App to map the Lutron Pico Remote's buttons to the various functions (light and fan).
Google Home Assistant Relay v1 Driver for Hubitat for my TTS
