I have several different sorts of fans. At least one has no shroud at all. All but one has a separate switch, and with it I believe the wires go to the gang box (there's a blue wire in there). Well, two aren't wired to a switch at all, but those are going to be replaced and rewired. I've seen that most people are going with the Hampton Bay. I plan on using a Pico remote to match everything else.
edit: All have pull chains for speed control, but want to use the Pico for that, if reasonably possible.
Can I use a Pico to control it? Would a Caseta in-wall switch be a better option? Without a shroud, where do I stick the controller? In the ceiling would be lots of work. In the wall would require a gang box. Is it easier/cheaper just to replace the fan? Are there other options than the Hampton Bay? (In other words, tell me what to do )
There are basically two options it automating the fan is important to you:
Wall fan control switch
Canopy mounted RF control
You can get Z-Wave fan control switch that offers 3 speeds. For canopy, Hampton Bay Zigbee controller offers 4 speeds.
Once either of those were installed, a Pico could certainly control it. I use a feature in RM for wall fan control switch that lets a single Pico button control the fan, with low, medium, high, off as four successive button presses. Or you could dedicate Pico buttons to 3 or 4 speeds plus off. Alexa can also be made to control the fans.
When a fan has a pull chain for speed, you set it to highest speed. Then the fan control switch or canopy device controls the actual speed.
Mine are fast, medium, slow, and off, which I assume from " 3 or 4 speeds plus off" is "3 speed". So is the Hampton Bay not compatible, or can ceiling fans actually handle an extra speed despite not being an out-of-the-box option? Or is the other setting on the Hampton Bay just ignored?
Fan speed is done through electronics (using capacitance), nothing specific to the motor. So you can take a 3 speed ceiling fan, use the pull switch to set it on high, then use a Lutron fan controller with 7 speeds -- no problem. If you put a Hampton Bay controller on it, it will have all 4 speeds.
I'd add that you should only consider this if you don't want to control the fan speed.
I have two fans that have room for the hampton bay receiver in the canopy, so I installed it x2. I can control the speed (all four speeds).
I have two other fans that wouldn't fit the receiver, so I have them connected to lutron caseta switches (the only kind I can use without neutral wires in the switch boxes). I can only turn these two fans on and off. Not ideal, but not having neutrals in the switch box limits my options.
Since I'm weird and insist on recessing switches, it occurred to me one option might be to get a "GE Z-Wave 3-Speed", and recess it behind the Pico. The Pico would be used to control it, but just for styling. That would allow speed control? Would there be any issues with that?
edit: Or as an open ended question, if installing in a shroud is NOT an option (without replacing the entire fan)... What does that leave to control the speed...? GE a good choice? Better choices?
From a practical point, is there any benefit to controlling speed, aside from getting to remove an unsightly pull-chain?
I use the GE in-wall fan speed controllers. I then have a webcore piston that varies the speed of the fan based on the ambient temperature in the room. I never have to think about low,med,high. only whether I want the fan on or off. and I have my goodnight routine set to turn on the bedroom fan.
I also have a fan in my sunroom and I have it come on automatically if temperature variance between that room and the rest of the house is greater than 2 degrees. I've also been toying with having the fans come on if the ambient temp is 3 degrees higher than the set point on the air conditioner (its just been really hot lately). I'm not sure how effective that really is at cooling me down though.
I agree, your focus on recessing switches and covering them with picos is weird, but it's your house so who cares what I think?
In this case, I actually think it does make some sense, in that you could recess a z-wave fan speed control switch and cover it with a pico to maintain the look you like. There is no option for fan speed control with either an in-wall relay or lutron caseta switch.
Fans work by making people in the room feel cooler (your body loses more heat when the air around you is moving), not so much by changing the temperature in the room (that would only be possible if a ceiling fan speeding up would more effectively circulate cooled air coming from an HVAC system). So I mostly automate the on/off part of fan control based on motion in the room. I like to use alexa for voice control of the speed of a fan based on how warm I happen to feel at that moment, which is tough to automate. My wife will never feel as hot as me at a given room temperature, for example.
How do you keep the piston from overriding a manual setting? If I come in all sweaty from working outside, and the WebCoRe automation says it should be on low, and I want it on high....?
I have a similar setup as @jrau272 . My piston use a variable to determine if the piston is in "automatic" or "manual" mode. If automatic, then the temp controls speed; if manual, it just goes to whatever speed I set and stays there until I turn it off or reset to automatic mode. For now, I'm using Minimotes to pick mode and speeds.
On an unrelated note, I have a cautionary tale on in-wall line speed controls when on multiple fans. I have one switch that controls two fans. The GE 3-speed Z-Wave controller worked fine on either OFF or HIGH; but on the intermediate speeds, the fans shared the power and ran at half the desired speed. Took me a while to realize I wasn't getting as much wind as I needed.
Interesting. I have not had that problem. I have 2 fans on one switch and they both seem to work fine on the intermediate modes.
@Roguetech I used to have a virtual switch I used in order to pause the piston if I wanted to override and run the fans at a manual speed, however I found I rarely, if ever, used it. I suppose you could also have the piston only run on programmatic changes and not physical ones.
For the RF control option, would it ever be possible to add a hardware expansion module to Hubitat that is similar to what the Bond does (without adding yet another hub)?
I see a number of available ports on the Hubitat, so it appears expansion was a consideration. It wouldn't provide two-way communication to report status, but it would open up the ability to control existing RF devices without a lot of rewiring. I'm probably crazy but wanted to throw the idea out there anyway.
Thinking of purchasing the Hampton Bay fan controller. How does the driver show up in HE? Are there separate child devices for the light and fan to control separately?
Does the light support dimming? I see there is a dip switch on the canopy module.
Yes, it will show up as the "parent" device with two child devices, one each for the light and fan. On the Hampton Bay remote itself, as you noted, you can set whether your bulb/fixture supports dimming or just on/off, with the default being the latter. (I actually don't know know how ZigBee control handles this since I'm not sure it's aware of how the remote is set and there's nothing for this on the canopy unit itself. I have Hue bulbs and so this is disabled on my remote, though I never intentionally switch--much less [presumably disastrously] attempt to dim--the bulbs at all.)
Is the Hampton bay still the best option for fan control in my case where I have 2 rooms each has a single gang wall control with a dimmer and fan speed control in 1? I know Lutron has options but I do not have a Lutron bridge, so that is out. The Hampton Bay does get pricey when you add the wall controls though, and I like still having the wall controls.
This is basically what I have now. Although mine does not have that bottom third switch.
Remove that switch and cap off the ends. Put the Hampton Bay zigbee controller in your canopy.
Buy a Lutron Pro Bridge and mount a Pico over the hole in your wall. Program the Pico to turn on/off the light (Top/Bottom buttons) and use the other 3 for the Fan.
Once you try the Hubitat / Lutron integration, you'll wonder why you didn't buy it earlier. You will find yourself on Amazon/Ebay looking for Picos in quantity.
Another variant on the same is something like this mocked up image. It uses a GE Smart Fan Controller, a Qubino FlushRelay (not shown) and the same Pico:
The Qubino sits deep in the box and controls the Light wire. The Fan Switch, controlsl the fan wire (duh!) and the Pico shows off it's major feature in that it flush mounts on the wall to the same thickness as all regular wall plates! IT will end up looking like a 2 gang box is there. (The image shows the single gang cover plate, but you'd actually use the 2 gang.)
End result, looking similar to this:
The Pico is removable, it'll slide right out of that holder.
In case it's not abundantly clear, here's another pic with the Pico going on the other side.
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