Zigbee fan controller from Homedepot $35.00

[aaiyar]

@marktheknife

I also found its zigbee connection behavior to be shockingly bad

I think that @neonturbo experimented with changing the antenna on his. And memory says it helps.

[tgrant48]

I have three that have been working well for a couple of years. I did have to change the location of the antenna on one of them to keep it working.

[stephen_nutt]

I have 5 of the Inovelli Z-Wave fan controllers. Two of them did not behave consistently to commands. All it took was pulling the antenna outside of the metal ceiling enclosure. I would assume the same would help for this Zigbee version.

[oldcomputerwiz]

@marktheknife

also found its zigbee connection behavior to be shockingly bad without a very nearby repeater. But that wasn’t a deal breaker for me, particularly since there doesn’t seem to be anything like it that supports zigbee.

Same here. I have 2 fans. They are both using repeaters and stay connected 99.99% of the time.

When I added them they were the only option available (ZigBee & zwave) if you didn't have dedicated lines for both the fan and the light.

It's nice to see that you can still buy them if you need to.

[mebejedi]

I have 5 of these running in my house....love'em!

That said, I'm looking towards upgrading to the Inovelli....the wall switch is MUCH better.

[neonturbo]

@aaiyar

experimented with changing the antenna

I did.

@aaiyar

memory says it helps.

It does.

Hampton Bay Zigbee Controller - Intermittent Connectivity - Resolved

This is a bit old, but I thought I would contribute something I did to help this device work better. The stock Zigbee antenna seems weak in general. I went to Amazon and purchased two new Zigbee/2.4 GHz Wireless antennas. The one was a small leaflet, like you would use internally in a Wifi router. The other was a more proper antenna on a printed circuit board. (links below) Both were about $8 each, so not expensive to try. The controller box opens up with two screws, and you just pop the old a…

[marktheknife]

Also was a big improvement for @bertabcd1234 IIRC.

[Rxich]

My KOF always stays connected. The trick for me was adding a repeater above the fan controller. I know not always possible. Tip came from @JDRoberts .

If the repeater is shut down, the fan controller immediately drops. I had to shut down the whole panel due to construction, which took out the repeater. Resetting the KOF controller is very difficult

[Rxich]

It is the controller on the bottom. The top one is Inovelli and 10000x better(backordered)

[scunny]

Will the Inovelli work if I only have one line/load going to the fan? IOW, no separate lines for fan and light.

[thebearmay]

Yes.

[scunny]

Thank you sir.

[thebearmay]

Does require that you have a neutral wire but only needs one power source.

Red Series Fan + Light Switch (Z-Wave)

Wiring Diagrams for Ceiling Fan + Light Switch

[Rxich]

Absolutely. I have 2 hot lines going to my fans, as I wired them prior to HA being a thing(1995). Now those secondary hots just sit there. The control box in the fan canopy acts as a relay delivering power to both fan &/or light.
The inovelli has worked excellent for me, and a huge plus are the notifications on the swich. If any door/window are opened, the switch flashes orange. So when we're in the addition, if anyone enters/opens any other window/doors we can be notified.

[scunny]

I'm good on the neutral. Now to just find the product.

[scunny]

Thanks, you just cost me about $420.00 plus probably shipping.

[scunny]

Wow, just poking around on the Inovelli forum and there's quite a cult following going on there. Is this hardware really that good?

[rlithgow1]

Yeah. The problem is supply though

[TomG]

@oldcomputerwiz

you will most likely need a zigbee repeater in the same room

I installed the Hampton Bay ceiling fan remotes in 5 of our 6 ceiling fans back when I was with ST.

@oldcomputerwiz is correct. You will need a ZigBee repeater near the fan. In addition to a weak ZigBee radio in the receiver, the canopy acts like a shield, plus the fan blades interrupt the ZigBee signal.
Once a ZigBee repeater was added in the room, the fan operated correctly through the app. Previously it was a crap shoot whether the fan and/or light would respond to commands from the app. The fan and light always could be controlled by the remote because that is not ZigBee.

[rlithgow1]

Interesting, Haven't had that problem at all, though the instructions have be have the antenna outside the canopy...