Fan Switch | Project Windy City - ON HOLD

Me too :frowning: ā€¦ problem was that we kicked off light strip prior to them allowing us to do Windy City bc they already had light strips developed and they wanted to work on Fan/Light first.

Yeah, itā€™s a route we could take. Let me toss it around internally and see what the consensus is!

:slightly_frowning_face:

Super bummed to hear about the delay. These are the missing switches to my house right nowā€¦and Iā€™ve been anxiously awaiting their release. I would participate in a kickstarter to speed up the process.

Iā€™d think Kickstarter/Indiegogo would be great for you. I would think you would get sell through to existing products from the exposure as well

Dang, I needed Windy City way more than I needed Hurricane. I am in for 3 but is there any chance of raising that kind of money up front when other brands have fan controllers too? I understand the dilemma.

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Wellā€¦ If itā€™s anything like the May 4th sale, it should be no problem at all lol

Let me talk to the manufacturer and see if this is a possibility! They typically prefer x amount down before starting anything.

Iā€™ll have an answer for you guys this weekend (Sunday).

I love all the enthusiasm! This is encouraging :slight_smile:

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What can we say, your products have blown us away - even the ones that havenā€™t been released!

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Just sent an email to the manufacturer ā€“ hereā€™s hoping they play ball!

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Will these be able to support multiple fans on one switch? Iā€™m currently using GE ones (ughā€¦) one of which has 3 fans on it, it works fine on high, but any other setting results in one very slow speed. Either way, Iā€™m down for at least 2 of them.

Just thought I would chime in on this and say I too would be down with the Kickstarter!!!

Would love to see you knock this out and get to the multi-button remote!!! (BFF I think)

Iā€™ll make sure to get this in the spec sheet if possible! Do you know approximately how many watts the fans are pulling?

Appreciate it :slight_smile: ā€“ BFF is for our paddle style remote ā€“ but we do have a project that we kicked off alongside BFF thatā€™s affectionately known as project, ā€œPush My Buttonsā€ lol!

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@Eric_Inovelli All 3 fans running on high are pulling about 260 watts combined, so Iā€™d say 90 watts is a safe number to assume, per fan. This was from watching my Sense whole home energy usage, with the fans off, on, then off again. So may not be super accurate.

Disappointingā€¦ this has been delayed so much, and frankly think the single switch would have been more beneficial than the dual light/fan switch. I have well over $1000 in Inovelli dimmers and switches, but sadly after many months of delay Iā€™m forced to move on. I bought 7 GE smart fan speed controls. Not thrilled with them, but not bothered enough to buy the Inovellis when the come out. Sorry guys!

Iā€™m just getting started in the home automation game and Iā€™m still looking for a good solution for a fan control. I sincerely hope this project resumes in the near future. In the mean time, here are my thoughts.

  1. I agree with @JeremyGNj that the switches should look different than other controls to prevent confusion. I also agree that individual lights would be a better visual indicator of the current speed. I suggest either having a separate button to represent each speed, or having up/down buttons with a fan symbol.
  2. Adding multiple LED lights for the speed would also allow very versatile options for status indications if they can be controlled individually.
  3. Can you add a feature that lets us control the fanā€™s spin direction? I donā€™t even know if thatā€™s possible, but my ceiling fan is unreachable due to vaulted ceiling. For that matter, I wonā€™t be able to use the radio control from the fan/light combo control for the same reason.

I disagree. I just changed the color of the leds to differentiate fan controls from light controls. It looks nicer in a row of switches for all to have the same basic look and feel.

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Just an update here ā€“ weā€™re working with the manufacturer to make this happen. Still working out a few details with them around potential pricing and yearly quantities, but there is hope that this will happen! Thanks for everyone whoā€™s commented here ā€“ I specifically showed them this thread!

Edit: Responses to the above questions/comments:

Ok, once we know more about the max wattage threshold I can update here ā€“ I think it should be fine as our On/Offā€™s can control up to 300W Inductive load.

Yeah, I understand ā€“ disappointing for us too.

  1. Hmmmmā€¦ Iā€™d be curious what everyone else thinks on this ā€“ one one hand, I prefer to have everything look uniform, but on the other, I can see the draw to having something different. The problem weā€™ll run into is that if we make something different looking then our dimmers, we will incur new tooling costs as we planned to use the tooling from our dimmers. I do like the potential to add maybe a fan icon on the switch. Maybe thatā€™s a good solve?
  2. Interesting, weā€™ve been toying with this idea for a bit (individually addressable LEDā€™s) and the problem we ran into was that there wasnā€™t enough room on the chipset. Now that weā€™ll be using 700 Series, this may be an option. Another thing to consider here is Iā€™m not sure it will have a clean look to it if we go down this route as the way the plastic insert is on the dimmer, it creates more of a blending to give it a smoother look (rather than a distinct LED 1, LED 2, LED 3). Hopefully I explained that well?
  3. I wish this was possible and we looked into this for the fan/light switch ā€“ but we wouldā€™ve had to add an additional wire to the canopy (and also hope that the fan has the capability to connect to the reverse wire) and it seemed that most fans did not have this option. We may add it to Gen 2ā€™s, however. As for a fan switch, there isnā€™t a way to do this as you would need to somehow reach the canopy to tell the fan to change direction and since this is just a fan switch, thereā€™s no way to communicate with the canopy. The switch is just regulating fan speed.

Great suggestions!

Yeah thatā€™s a good idea too ā€“ Iā€™m with you on the same look and feel ā€“ but playing devilā€™s advocate here, if you have guests over and the switches are all the same, do you think they would know what switch does what without some sort of icon? Iā€™m guessing they would run into the same problem with dumb switches (ie: not knowing what does what), but just throwing it out there.

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Iā€™m on the side of same look to keep things uniform and no icon. I would assume your average non-smart home has standard panel or toggle switches that all look exactly the same so I donā€™t understand why the level of confusion would be increased. I love @rsjaffeā€™s solution of changing the led color to signal that itā€™s a different type switch. Also, any idea if these switches might work on bathroom exhaust fans? Iā€™m guessing the load would have to be high enough but Iā€™m looking for a way to complete the look in my home. Thanks as always for you guys hard work!

We always have that issue when there is more than one switch in a gang, even when all the switches are for lights. Fans arenā€™t special in that regards. So what if someone hits the fan switch instead of the light.

Anyway, I donā€™t allow guests to touch my paddles. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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I like the icons on the LZW36 although not many people in my house look at the switch close enough to see them they just asked if they didnā€™t just want to try one.

I like the same setup, but if you were going to submit a change for V2ā€¦what about leaving the light button as is, but for the fan, have the LED glass circle around the outer edge of the button (360 degree) and have the light ā€œchaseā€ to simulate a fan circling around. Just an idea.