Hrmmm now you’ve piqued my interest.
Same thing can already be done with the Hampton Bay Zigbee controller, but the hope is to have something that doesn’t lose pairing and force this temperamental re-pairing proceedure like the Hampton Bay controller has.
Good Morning,
Were you successful with this fan controller? Please let me know.
Well, we have three fans (two Monte Carlo's and one Hunter).
The Hunter is a 'pull chain' variety, and for that, I use the GE Z-wave Smart Fan Control for fan control (after pulling the pull chain 3 times for max on), which works great to control fan speed. For that fan's light, I use an Aeotec Nano Dimmer wired inline in the canopy - that also works well.
For the Monte Carlo in our master bedroom (not the 'ceiling hugger') variety, I use the GE Z-wave Smart Fan Control as well. I had to wire the fan remote control unit back inline in the canopy, and I use that remote control only to reverse fan direction. I turned the fan on to 'max' speed' using that control, and then control it from the GE Z-wave Fan Controller. The light on this fan was easier, as we had a double-gang box in the master bedroom, so I had the electricians just bring down the red wire controlling the fan light, and I have an Aeotec Nano Dimmer with Wallswipe (their latest control surface) wired to control the light.
The last Monte Carlo is a 'ceiling hugger' in our Great Room/TV Room. This is the one that's a bugger - it's got a highly integrated remote received in the unit, with a mess of wires that confounded even our electrician. It works as the other Monte Carlo does (remote control unit used only once to turn the fan to 'max' and then kept around to reverse fan direction in winter) with the GE Z-wave Fan Control. For the light on this one, I have been thinking about trying the Aeotec Nano Dimmer in the canopy (there's room), but haven't been brave enough because even the electricians couldn't figure out how to access just the wiring controlling the light without potentially hosing up the remote receiver). Unfortunately, we don't have a spot in our double-gang box where the fan control is for a separate Z-wave light switch, as our patio light switch is in that box.
One of these days, I may try to do the Aeotec Nano Dimmer for that fan light, since we technically have a 'spare' version of this fan (long story), but, for now, we don't really need the light in that room, as it has three rows of two cans each, so there is plenty of light.
Sorry for the long-winded answer, but I thought I should give the full update on what we ended up doing with our fans.
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Wow Mannn...Fan insanity there! I am lucky that I just have the one little 'ole ceiling fan with no existing remote to contend with, so it sounds like I should be safe using this switch with it. Thank you for getting back to me!
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I got it in there...with no major issues. Wiring was cut and dry as I was hoping. Took a few rounds of Z-Wave discover and repair but all is GOOD MANN!! Is cool.."Hey google, turn on the east wing fan" NICE!
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FWIW I have 8 of these fan controls on pull-chain Hunter fans. They work great. For setup, all I did was set the fan control to 100%, use the pull chain to set the fan to high speed, then I actually cut the chains off since I don't like the danglies.
I have light kits on 6 of the 8 fans too, but those are wired using a separate circuit and controlled using separate GE dimmer switches.
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At the moment we don't use the lights too much so for now it's not an issue. BUT...pretty safe bet the time will come when Wifey decides "I REALLY need these too Johnnnnnn!" Haaaa!
I ended up installing a two gang box and used a Leviton dimmer and GE Z-Wave fan controller switch instead of the Hampton Bay Zigbee controller. This replaced a single gang box that had both the light and fan control on one. There were too many negative reviews for the Hampton Bay wireless wall switch and the cost of the dimmer and fan switch was actually less then the Hampton Bay controller and wireless wall module. Plus no batteries!
Edit: I did notice that the GE 14287 fan controller's device page shows up as a dimmer, although the device driver is actually GE Smart Fan. According to the spec there is 3 speeds, but the dimmer of course allows 0-100. Any one know at what level the fan goes from low-med-high?
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Low = 1-33
Medium = 34-66
High = 67-99
My rules just use 33, 66, 99
In ST when I looked at the level vs l-m-h it was something weird like 15, 40, 75.
I don't remember it being linear, and it definitely never went to 100, that I'm sure of.
I had a feeling that this was the correct levels, thanks for confirming. I think a low-med-high setting should be added to the device page. Google Home also sees it as a dimmer instead of a fan controller it seems because when I tell it to turn on the master bedroom lights it also turns on the fan.
Many of us put our fans in a bonus/catch-all room in Google Home to prevent Google from turning off fans with the lights.
Good idea I will do the same, thanks.
If you happen too tell Google to turn off ALL the lights, it will still turn off the fans of course. Just a reminder.
Is there any easy way to setup low/med/high through Google Home instead of telling GH a dim percentage? Or maybe it would be possible to add a low/med/high in the driver, since this driver is specifically for the GE fan controller.
I do this using IFTTT. For a single fan, you can go from IFTTT to Hubitat and have it set the fan level. For multiple fans (which I use grouped together), I have IFTTT send a webhook to a RM Trigger cloud end point. Then that RM rule sets both fans to a specific percentage.
Looking for something more local if possible. To me since this is a fan controller seems like such a basic task to control low/med/high fan speeds should be present in the driver. Its like have a dimmer that only has on/off and no dim option.
Since you're using GH you're already cloud-based by default. There's obviously another potential failure point introduced by putting IFTTT in the middle, but you're not going to get local no matter what you do as long as GH is the input device.
True, but IFTTT is adding additional latency and another point of failure. We are talking about core functionality of the device. I think controlling fan speed should be as easy as a dimmer or bulb considering how basic of a function it is.
