WAC fan integration with Hubitat

[user3431]

I am looking to move my Home over from OpenHab to hubitat and in the process of playing around with some stuff i could never get to work with openhab.

Searching around in posts it looks like Modern Form Fans (WAC smart Fan parent company) are capable of work with hubitat, but WAC is not due to it being more cloud based. A work around for this is to create a connection between Alexa (which integrates with the WAC ios app) and hubitat with IFTTT.

Is there a guide or best practices for doing this type of set up. i have 2 Fans with lights i want to have run synchronized. I dont want to actually use any alexa voice commands if possible, just have it handle background communications.

[tivomaniac]

I use this:

Home | Bond

To control my fans there is an interface to Hubitat. Dunno if it would work with Modern Form or not but you could do some checking.

[Hatallica]

A quick scan of the forum looks like Modern Form may only use cloud control.

Bond does now have native HE support. Most remote control devices require the bridge. Others have built-in smarts. I have used both with good results.

[brad]

@user3431

WAC is not due to it being more cloud based

Sorry I just came across this. I have a WAC fan, and this app is compatible with it:

Support for Modern Forms Ceiling Fan Control

I noticed there is now support in Smartthings to control these RF and WiFi controllable fans but it uses a logon to your Modern Forms account. Being new to all this, I assume this means all the control is going across the cloud. I would love to start my first HE project. I have never developed anything on a smart hub but have been developing software for a little while. I obviously want local access control over my ceiling fans and figure there should be a way to either capture the 315mhz signa…

[user3431]

does not work with bond as they are bluetooth fans. bond can not talk to blue tooth devices.

[user3431]

Just saw this and was able to get the everything added to Hubitat with using this driver:

GitHub - bhamiltoncx/hubitat-modern-forms-fan: Hubitat driver for Modern Forms combined fan + light device.

It adds both fan and light to my hubitat, but i can only control the light but not the fan. Is. there something i need to do to have the fan controls added to the app as well?

Also, are you using the this driver or the one created by 1info? I tired the driver from 1info with no success...

[brad]

That’s the one I’m using. I don’t have a light in mine, so I turned off the light option. This driver creates separate devices for fan and light, so are you sure you’re not just overlooking the separate fan device?

[user3431]

This is what I'm seeing right now on my dash board:

[brad]

Ok you can see the fan controls… but they aren’t doing anything when you click on them (e.g. on/off)?

[user3431]

can only see fan controls when going into device settings on laptop. i don't get a tile in the app to turn on/off or change speeds.

[brad]

Can you please explain what app you’re going into? This is only a device driver and doesn’t have an app associated with it.

• if you’re speaking of the lights/switches section of the habitat app, since this is a fan and not a regular switch, it won’t appear there. Only on off lights and switches appear in this section. Even dimmable lights aren’t dimmable from this page. If you want it to appear on the switches and devices page of the Hubitat app, you will need to create a virtual switch device and map it to the fan device using a rule so that it appears as an on off switch that is controllable from the section
• if you have a custom dashboard that you want to add this to, you can do so, and select a fan device to make it appear as a controllable fan on the custom dashboard.
• You should also be able to control the fan device in rules that you have set up.

[user3431]

This explains it all for me. you are correct, i was referring to the Hubitat app.

Will start reading up on how to create a virtual fan switch.

[jameslslate]

When you create the device on the dashboard, you can select what attribute it shows. Have you added the fan separately and chosen the correct template for a fan? You will end up with two buttons for each fan/light. One for light, one for fan.

[brad]

@jameslslate - I think you’re referring to adding the fan to a custom dashboard.

@user3431 - Here’s a quick take on how to do this:

1. Create a virtual switch. (Docs > Virtual Devices topic) and be sure to add it to a room so it shows up in the app.
2. Create a rule to track what each device is doing and do the same to the other device. An example is below.

A few notes on this rule:

• In this example Ceiling Fan is the virtual device, and Great Room Ceiling Fan is the physical WAC device
• Essentially, this uses a local variable to set which device triggered the rule and then tracks that device and does the same to the other device.
• The private Boolean ensures that when the 1st device triggers the other, the changing of the other device doesn’t re-trigger the rule.
• You can add other triggers and jazz this up, but this is a basic way to do it.