Will that 2.4 GHz RF signal between the switch and canopy module interfere with Zigbee, which I believe also uses 2.4?
Eric,
The breeze mode basically randomly changes the speed of the fan while it’s running. It’s cycling through the 4 speeds of the fan and you can’t select to block the highest speed.
When you set up the fan, you set it at the highest speed on the fan using the pull chain and leave it there. I tried setting the pull chain at a lower speed but that doesn’t work because when the breeze mode tries to go to the lowest speed it would actually turn off the fan.
There is app control of the fan through Wink but it doesn’t work reliably and doesn’t allow you to adjust the breeze mode settings.
Nick
Alright cool – yeah, the flow would be:
- You send a command to the HUB (either via mobile, voice, etc)
- HUB sends a Z-Wave command to the light switch
- Light switch sends an RF Command (via 2.4 GHz) to the module
- Module turns on/off/dims the light or on/off/speed changes the fan
I believe this should work – but let me have the engineers confirm. I’ll send them this message.
Awesome, we appreciate it! I’m in for 3 myself 
This is an interesting question. So, when talking to the engineers, they were really only concerned about if the same band was in the same module (ie: 915 MHz and 908.42 MHz). But, I’ve also seen it where if there are too many WiFi devices, it can start to mess with your network. However, I’m talking about an insane amount of WiFi/ZigBee devices.
In this case, if you’re investing in a Z-Wave network, you should be fine with having the 2.4 GHz for 3 switches. But good call out for sure if someone starts with a ton of WiFi devices – there may be a slight delay from the switch to fan.
Interesting – ok, thanks for the input. Maybe we can offer a couple of settings and tie it to the config button so that you can choose it from the config button.
We built this functionality (config button) for Wink specifically bc they don’t allow the change of parameters in their platform and I have a soft-spot for Wink bc it’s what I started on and got me hooked on Home Automation. So, basically, what you can do is configure the parameters from the switch itself and not need Wink (or any HUB for that matter) to change anything.
Example: You want to change the ramp rate of the lights (ie: how fast they turn on). Normally you could go in and edit the parameter and it takes maybe 30 seconds. However, if you can’t do this (or don’t have the functionality) you can hold down the config button for 10 seconds to enter config mode, press the config button again a certain amount of times to go to the parameter you’re looking to edit and use the config up/down buttons to increase or decrease the settings. Finally, hold the config button for 10 seconds to save.
I’m going to put this in the list above – I know you didn’t specifically ask for it, but the collaboration back and forth was great and I think it’s a cool idea!
I was assuming this had a hard wired option to avoid needing a fan shroud. My home (and most stuff built in the last decade) has two wires running from the switch to the fan. I know I can use current products ( for eg. GE light switch and GE fan controller) but I prefer the user experience of this physical design better.
Are you considering making a fan controller only hard wired switch? Or making a hard wired version of this dual fan/ light switch? Probably a smaller market than the retrofit market this product will support, but a growing market.
Thanks!
Hey @Arib0nd – first, thanks for commenting and welcome to the community! Yeah, we definitely are making a standalone fan switch (that you can use in conjunction with a dimmer switch if you’d prefer for the lights of your fan). We’ve kicked off the project of the standalone fan switch, but most resources are going towards the fan/light switch at this point because it’s our #1 most requested product and there’s nothing else out there.
However, you bring up an interesting point around creating a fan/dimmer switch with two separate lines coming into the box. I wonder if the switch could be modified to give people the option of using one line vs two (similar to how we created our dimmer switch to allow you to either use the neutral wire or not).
Let me run this by the manufacturer – I’m sure it will be too late to change any physical appearance for this round without significantly impacting the launch date, but it could be a v2.0 version for sure.
I’m going to add this to the project above for us to explore as I think it’s a cool idea that we didn’t even consider.
Appreciate the input and have an awesome day – I’ll keep you posted!
EDIT 08/19/19: I’m still pushing the team – the design as stands requires a neutral and line wire to the switch and then the switch will communicate via RF to the module. Adding in this upgrade will make it so that we have to add two additional terminals and redesign the PCB board. I really want this in V1, but you know how those R&D folks can get
So I really like what I am seeing here! Eric, a couple of questions?
Is the fan module a transceiver? If not how will you measure the fan and light power separately? Also for the fan control, Will speed be adjustable in 1% increments (capacitive?) or set levels (solid-state, like the Hampton Bay) High, medium, medium-low and low, etc?
One of the things I have noticed about the HB controllers “Breeze Effect”. When it is switching between low through whatever, every time that it changes speeds you can hear it. I am suspecting that this is due to the inductive kick when changing speeds (in larger increments) or maybe due to the torque of the motor, or the controller itself. It’s not super loud. But loud enough that I won’t use this feature at night in the bedroom 
. Not sure if smaller incremental changes or ramping over time will reduce this noise.
Yeah @Ma2J definitely! Thanks for asking.
Yes, the module will be able to receive and send commands. I just confirmed with the engineers this morning as you gave me a slight panic attack (thank you though, as this would’ve been terrible down the road if we didn’t think through this) – the module will send data back to the Z-Wave switch, which will interpret the commands and update the data accordingly.
The switch will be adjustable at set levels (low, medium and high).
Yeah, that’s good feedback – I’ve never used this feature, nor do I have a Hampton Bay fan, but when it was suggested to us, it sounded pretty cool. I did wonder how it would sound as it seems like every time I use my normal ceiling fan on a smart switch, you can hear it kick on. I haven’t tested it too much at adjusting levels (I like my fans on high all the time – I know, I’m weird – I’ve grown accustomed to sleeping with the fan on).
Something to for sure watch out for as we move to testing on this feature!
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@Eric_Inovelli Thank you. I would be happy to have this even in V2. I have the Wink/Zigbee hampton bay fan modules in all my fans, and they are great when they work… but for whatever reason they seem to constantly drop off the network and need resetting/repairing to get to work.
But I understand that adding two terminals to the switch… and redesigning the PCB board to do what the fan module does - it needs circuits to safely controlthe fan motor speed etc… may be a challenge to fit in the switch itself. If that ends up being the case, another option could be to have a “mini fan module” that can fit in the outlet box?
Just trying to give you some ideas in case you run into additional challenges.
So trying to get an idea for if this would work. I have a ceiling fan that can’t be rewired (cathedral ceiling), right now I leave power to the fan on at the switch and replaced the light bulbs with GE bulbs. I use my phone / a button / voice command to turn on off the lights and the draw string to control the fan. Understanding that I can’t rewire the fan, if I replaced the switch with this and left the fan portion on and did not wire the light portion to the fan (since it lacks the separate wiring to do so) would I be able to set up a scene that turns on the bulbs when that is light switch is triggered and off when triggered again? Or does the switch need to be wired to a light? Thanks!
Hey @Arib0nd – so, we had a long discussion about this feature and we fought as best as we could for it for V1, but there are a couple of things that were working against us unfortunately that we have to push it to V2.
I did learn a bit more about the current design and how it works and understand their pushback.
The gist of it is that most of the dimming and fan speed electronics are located in the module itself. The original ask to the team was to make sure that the switch depth was as minimal as could be to fit in smaller gang-boxes, so they went with putting most of the hardware in the module itself.
If we were to move that hardware from the module back down to the switch, it would take up a ton of room and the switch depth would be massive.
So, I’m having them look into that for next year as we’ll be hopefully developing some dual switches that have been brought up in the forums and essentially, the fan/light switch is a dual switch, so we’d like to start understanding how to make that happen.
I wish I had better news on this front, but I appreciate the suggestion and definitely know that the team will still work towards it as it’s in everyone’s best interest to do so!
Could you elaborate more on this one?
This is an interesting example – thanks for sharing! Definitely something I’ll run by the team.
In theory I believe this should work, however, I need to understand whether or not the signal from the switch to the module can be disabled for lights only. There’s a similar example of how this works with our in-wall switches where you can disable local control (ie: the relay) and then have the switch send a command directly to the HUB to turn on the lights (or if you use Z-Wave, you can associate the switch directly to the bulbs and have no need for a HUB).
So, what you could do if all goes well with the answer I get, is to essentially disable the command from the Lights portion of the switch to the module, but keep the RF signal from the switch to the module for the fan portion.
Then, you would be able to send a Z-Wave Central Scene Command directly to the bulbs (if you swap out your GE bulbs with Z-Wave ones) to dim them up or down and turn off. If you stick with the GE ones (or any other non-Z-Wave bulbs) you can still control them via the switch, however, you won’t be able to dim them in real-time because of the different protocols (WiFi vs Z-Wave or ZigBee vs Z-Wave). To get around this you could set different scenes for when you tap the switch (ie: Tap 1x = turns on bulbs to last state, Tap 2x = sets bulbs to 50%, Tap 3x = sets bulbs to 25%, etc).
Hopefully that makes sense?
NET: I believe this should be possible if we can separate and disable the RF Commands for the light and fan. If we can, then I can better explain how this will work!
Hey there! Now that I know about this community, I’ll comment on here rather than reddit haha.
I’m the one that mentioned Breeze mode. Really looking forward to installing these once they’re done!
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Sounds great. Will definitely be interested in seeing if this works! Just can’t convince myself rewiring would be in the least bit worth it! Looking forward to all your new / future devices. Have you considered any type of controller or hub (which is a whole new ball game I know).
Thanks!
-MParadis
Ha, yeah I get it!
Yeah, we’re definitely talking about this internally – could be that we partner with an existing HUB company or we may build our own. Either way, we definitely have a vision for 2020 being the year that we pull the entire ecosystem together!
@Eric_Inovelli, this is both awesome and frustrating… in that I have to wait to get my hands on it! The marketplace really needs a new fan control. The only common Z-wave FCs I see out there are the GE and Honeywell, and I think they are the same product under the hood (Jasco). Along those lines, do you have any ideas about pricing? Inovelli has been very price competitive in the past. The aforementioned units seem to hover around $45.
Also, where does OpenHAB2 fit into this? The previous line of Inovelli products seemed to play quite well with OH2. Any reason to think this won’t? Having said that, while i have been pretty committed to OH2 on RPi, the Inovelli name could convince me to switch to a new Hub!
-GBS
Another thing that crossed my mind. A lot of houses like mine have separate fan and fan light switches in the wall. Replacing that with this single switch will leave a hole. While that can be blocked off with a filler plate, it would be cool if there were another (paddle switch sized) useful device that could occupy that space on the switch plate. Something like a combo temp/humidity/motion sensor or similar? (Or perhaps just a HAL-9000 style eye? 
)
Y. If you had switches that could pop in, similar to how circuit breakers pop into a panel. So if I wanted an on/off and a dimmer, I would order a module and then order an on/off and a dimmer (or a fan or. sensor.)ala carte… Personally, i would never change my mind, but if one decides to change an on/off for a dimmer, it conceivably would be a piece of cake. If it cost $10 or $15 or $20 more, so be it. Also, barring any problems with code, the switches could protrude out 1/4 or 3/8" if necessary…(or could be made flush with a box trim plate)
Haha, yeah I know – this has been a request that I’ve heard even before I started Inovelli and was just tinkering with home automation. I’m surprised no one came out with it tbh. So we’re pretty excited!
Yeah it should work with OH2 – Eric M. who is a literal wizard when it comes to coding will work with whomever over there to make sure it works as he did with the prior versions. Same goes for Hubitat, SmartThings, and there’s one other one but I can’t think of it off the top of my head (similar to OH2).
Saved the best question for last… so those switches mentioned above by GE/Honeywell/Jasco are Fan only switches. Since this one (Project Hurricane) is a fan + light (which also has to include a module), it will be a little more expensive than this. On top of that, the tariffs have not helped at all and I’m hoping by the time this launches those will be sorted out, but who knows. We’re still working on pricing, but I can assure you we will maintain our promise to keep things affordable.
For a fan only switch, we did start this project which will be released after Project Hurricane, which is located here: Fan Switch | Project Windy City - ON HOLD
Yeah definitely – my house is a bit weird in that some rooms have separate light/fan switches whereas others only have one. What you could do in this situation is use the standalone fan switch (mentioned above) along with either a dimmer or On/Off switch.
Or we could go the HAL-9000 style and start producing something like the Eye of Sauron Fibaro produces 
(https://www.amazon.com/Fibaro-FGMS-001-ZW5-motionsensor-Multisensor-FGMS-001/dp/B01KOGDETI)
Stuff of nightmares right there!
Ah sorry @mgreenb561, I meant to respond to this in another thread (I think it was you). Yeah I personally love this idea. I’m curious on the logistics and certifications (whether UL will allow it) but it seems like Swidget was able to come up with an in-wall outlet that is exactly what you’re talking about (I remember seeing them via a Z-Wave Newsletter or something and thought, “dang, that’s an amazing idea”): https://swidget.com/
Y that was me. the swidget is nice but no switches.
from your comments, i get the impression that there is a z-wave module plus your board for your firmware in each device. If you could share the zwave module in the fixture (kind of the reverse of swidget) with modules for 2 separate paddles (or sensor) w/ a separate board on each (it could probably protrude a centimeter if needed?) or not even have paddle modules…just control whether it is on/off or dimmer (or even dumb) thru firmware.
I was thinking more along the lines of a stab-lok design with a faceplate that would lock it in… I would just guess locking it in would be more amenable to UL than the swidget design, which appears to have been approved anyway. Not an engineer…just a wannabe
I really don’t see why no one builds out (aesthetics??) for space; sensors protrude from the wall, old rockers and dimmer knobs do. They sell faceplates at HD that are about .5 cm the Lutron Picos are out