Fan & Light Switch (Project Hurricane)

Hi, is there a way I can sign up for the beta test? I would like to purchase some of these, but I have been burned by pre-orders before in the past (multiple different companies). However, I don’t mind paying the $60 to get beta hardware and contributing.

Been quiet lately is the beta testing underway? How is it going??

@Eric_Inovelli thank you so much for all your hard work! so happy this switch is now a reality.

Were you able to get an answer to my questions from the manufacture?

@Eric_Inovelli , just checking here, the fan only has low, medium, and high settings?

I’m looking to replace my Lutron Maestro (which looks just like this except the lights and buttons are reveresed) which has 7 speeds.

Sorry if my question has been answered, I did search and can’t tell…
While I realize that this is for a fan/light combo, would it work to replace two separate single pole switches (controlling light fixtures) that are already in one gang?
I’m looking to replace something like this:
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Leviton-Decora-15-Amp-Single-Pole-Dual-Switch-White-R62-05634-0WS/100356887
If the fan switch leads to step-wise dimming of LED bulbs, fine with me… but I don’t want to order this and realize I can’t make it work.
thanks!

@psmucker you may want to follow these two threads.

@psmucker Look at the bottom of the original post for a wiring diagram. The switch doesn’t have load terminals it just talks to the canopy module which has the load wires and is designed to fit in the canopy of a ceiling fan, so it wouldn’t really work for your use case. I’d follow those posts @ViggS pointed to or look at Zooz’s Zen30 if you don’t want to wait.

Yeah, sorry – I forgot to respond here!

The answer to parent/child = yes. You will be able to control them separately via Alexa (assuming you have a Z-Wave hub that is connected to Alexa).

The answer to the question around using it as an on/off vs dimming – so far, that’s the goal. You’ll have the option to change the ramp rate and dimming speed on the switch to be instant to mimic an on/off bulb.

Hey thanks for asking and completely understand the risk behind pre-orders. We’re all closed for this round for beta testing, but possibly we can grab you for other projects as they come up!

Going well, thanks for asking! Units were sent out and we’re now in the process of testing. More to come, but yes, we’re all having some fun with the units!

Tonight (Feb 05, 2020) we’ll be able to talk further with the manufacturer about the firmware. Unfortunately, they’ve been mandated to work remotely until the 10th due to the coronavirus (luckily they are very far from the epicenter, but still…) and they had to cancel last week’s weekly check-in.

So, how I understand it is the fan has 1-99 levels of speed from a Z-Wave standpoint. The higher the level, the faster the fan goes. However, the platform the fan switch is connected to usually has some sort of built in, “fan theme” (ie: SmartThings and Hubitat have low, medium, high, etc). We’ve seen some drivers that allow smaller steps such as: low, low-medium, medium, medium-high, high

I have a ceiling fan that is directly wired into power and uses the pull chains to turn on lights and fan. Is it possible to install the box that comes with this switch, and the switch on separate power connections and have it work? I have a switch box with a free spot that already has another switch in it. So I can hook the switch into power. There’s just not a wire from there to the fan. I didn’t want to hire an electrician to run one but it sounds like this switch might work for me. Is that correct?

Hi @nullsmack, Welcome!

So if I understand your question correctly, yes you should be able to do this. The RF transceiver that gets mounted at the fan communicates to the switch wirelessly. As long as the switch is installed in a box that has Hot & Neutral you should be good to go. Think of the Switch as a wireless remote… on steroids :muscle: :slight_smile:

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I’m glad I checked back in here today because I see pre-orders are open!

I’m sure you guys are all set, but if you need anyone to do any testing on an early batch I’m willing to do so. I’m an EE and work in R&D for a switch and circuit breaker manufacturer (low voltage and commercial/industrial, no residential stuff), so I’m not worried about playing with something that may not be 100% yet.

I may have missed it, but are there any details yet on the specific zwave parameters it’s going to employ? While I’m waiting I’d like to work on modifying the Homebridge Z-wave plug-in to add support since I use HomeKit exclusively for all my home automation.

Out of curiosity, has the device been tested for the known bug with the dimmer where the notification LED doesn’t stay lit?

Will this work with Alexa if I have a hub?

I was disappointed because the description says that this switch won’t have a non-neutral version. However, as I was looking at the wiring diagram I realized that the way this switch works it doesn’t matter if your existing setup has neutral wire or not. The electrical circuit is the same for this setup if your source coming into the switch box first or the ceiling box first. I edited the wiring diagram to move the source lines from wire nuts in the box to the wire nuts in the light to demonstrate.


The wiring circuit diagram shows that they really are the same electrically, regardless of whether the source comes in at the light box or the switch box.

Even if you had an extra wire running from the light/fan to the switch, there shouldn’t be an issue as you could just cap the end at the switch. As long as you have two wires that run between the switch box and the light box you can make this work and I think that the only houses where it couldn’t work would have very non-standard wiring. I think even ancient knob and tube wiring could work with this switch. Is there a wiring setup that I’m missing?

I think calling out “neutral wire required” may be confusing to some potential customers since we normally consider “neutral wire required” to mean the source wires enter at the switch box, not the light box.

Let me check with the engineers on this one, but the reason a neutral wire is required is because it’s needed to keep the Z-Wave chip inside the switch powered.

In the non-neutral setting our dimmers allow for some power to trickle to the switch and this isn’t built into the canopy module so that’s why we’re recommending a neutral wire.

I’m not an electrician by any means so I want to verify this, but my understanding is that a neutral is required at this time.

However, yes, I believe if you have power originating from the light, it should work, thanks for pointing that out!

Great question - we have a tech sheet that we’ve requested various parameters on, but they may change prior to launch so we haven’t released it yet.

Would it be helpful to share it even though they may change? I’m happy to do so if so, I just didn’t want to confuse everyone!

As for the beta tester question, yes, we’re all set for this round, but I’ll definitely keep you in mind for future projects!

Yes, we definitely will work thru this problem with this switch. We’re also working on patching up that issue and sending out an update shortly. The manufacturer has a list of these issues/enhancements but they are delayed due to the health issues over in China.

Yes, as long as the hub connects to Alexa, you’ll be able to control the fan and lights separately :slight_smile:

I did some more digging and it looks like this switch should be able to work in any setup with parallel routing (line and neutral run together/near each other). Early knob and tube used direct routing to save money since it can require less wire, but eventually moved to parallel routing since it was much easier to troubleshoot and fix.

To add project Hurricane to an existing non-neutral switch circuit you essentially turn the load wire into a neutral wire by attaching it to the neutral wire instead of the fixture since the module takes the place of the load wire(s). So yes, it requires a neutral, but any house that doesn’t have early knob and tube wiring should be able to rework the circuit to work without running any new wires through the walls.

All subsequent generations of wiring run at least two wires together in the same bundle, so it’s only knob and tube wiring that gets tricky. You could safely state that it works with all wiring setups*. (except some early knob and tube installations, see your electrician if your wiring is older than 1920). That way those that normally see “neutral required” and turn away won’t think that this product wouldn’t work for them.

So in summary, yes a neutral wire is required, but just by changing the grouping of the wires at the module you turn your load wire into a neutral and you’re in business. I think calling out a neutral as required may confuse some customers that normally shop for “no neutral required” products.

Looking to get these for a few of my rooms but i have a large living room with one switch that controls 2 fans with lights. Will there be an option to add a second unit for the fan tied to the same switch? Or is there another way to do this?

Is there any double tap functionality planned? Like to control other devices or scenes?