Question on new ceiling fans and Insteon control

[propman07]

Hello-

 

I have a few ceiling fans in the house that are relatively new. By that, I mean that they come with a remote that controls the fan speed (Low, Medium, and High), as well as the light. The fan can also have its rotation direction reversed as well as turned off. The light can be dimmed as well.

 

Currently, I have them connected to the Insteon 2477S, which works okay. The only issue that I have is that when I turn the switch on, the light comes on for the fan, but the fan itself does not come on. I have to use the remote to turn the fan to low, or medium, or high.

 

I wanted to see if anyone here had the same issue, and if you had a different setup for this case. I would like to be able to turn on the fan portion via Insteon as well as control the light of the fan as well. This would allow me to use the ISY to run programs at certain times of the day to help keep the rooms in the house cool.

 

Thanks.

[apostolakisl]

The only way ISY will be able to control speed is by getting a fanlinc. The only possible caveat to that is that you could train an irlinc or global cache unit to shine the ir commands to the fan from a nearby location. This assumes that the remote that came with the fan is ir based.

[Xathros]

Hi propman07-

 

Unfortunately, those type of fan controls do not work well with Insteon. The way we do this is to use a fan without the remote control and instead wire in a Fanlinc to manage the fan speed and light. This will give you the ability to operate the fan (Hi/Med/Lo/Off) as well as the Light (On/Off/Brighten/Dim) via Insteon commands from programs or linked controllers. The fanlinc DOES NOT manage fan direction. Direction is usually controlled by a switch on the fan itself.

 

Some of the fans with integrated remotes can have the remote removed and replaced by the Fanlinc but you will lose control of the fan direction.

 

-Xathros

[propman07]

The only way ISY will be able to control speed is by getting a fanlinc. The only possible caveat to that is that you could train an irlinc or global cache unit to shine the ir commands to the fan from a nearby location. This assumes that the remote that came with the fan is ir based.

 

That's what I was starting to look at. I would have to bypass the fan's controller, and install the fanlinc. I'm pretty sure that the remote/fan is RF as well.....just wondering what others were doing for something like this.

 

Thanks for the reply.

[propman07]

Hi propman07-

 

Unfortunately, those type of fan controls do not work well with Insteon. The way we do this is to use a fan without the remote control and instead wire in a Fanlinc to manage the fan speed and light. This will give you the ability to operate the fan (Hi/Med/Lo/Off) as well as the Light (On/Off/Brighten/Dim) via Insteon commands from programs or linked controllers. The fanlinc DOES NOT manage fan direction. Direction is usually controlled by a switch on the fan itself.

 

Some of the fans with integrated remotes can have the remote removed and replaced by the Fanlinc but you will lose control of the fan direction.

 

-Xathros

Xathros-

 

Thanks for the reply. Maybe I'll convert one of the fans that I have to fanlinc, and see how it works before I do them all.

[iostream212]

+1 for fanlinc. Have 5 of them and they are ultra reliable. I don't believe I have ever had a missed command. In any event the light does not turn on, at least in my experience, when power is removed and re-applied. The only downer is the control aspect. Most use up 4 kpl scene buttons to fully control. I use 1 with state variables, but it is a tad bit on the slow side.

 

Sent from my Galaxy S4 using Tapatalk 2

[Brian H]

A member of the Smarthome Forums is doing a Fanlinc in a Casablanca Fan with digital controls.

I believe they where going to have to remove the controls to use the Fanlinc.

In their case. There was a motor running capacitor on the control board. That has to be moved so it is connected directly to the motors wires. Capacitor also would determine direction. Depending on which of the two individual windings had the Line on it and the other just the cap between them.

 

http://www.smarthome.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=10229