Hi! First time posting and trying to make sure I don’t buy the wrong product.
I have a relatively new build (2014) house with switches and regular light fixtures (no fans). There are three wires at the light (ground and I assume load/neutral, but I’m fuzzy on what it should be).
My wife wants to get a ceiling fan/light combo and I want to use inovelli blues. My understanding is that in this configuration, at best I can use the fan canopy module and an on/off switch, but the dimmers are out. Is this assumption correct?
If I have a dimmer with presence sensing can I use it at all?
Ok. To make it simple. Turn the power off to the switch and pull it out of the wall far enough to be able to see all of the wires and take pictures showing all the wires coming into and going out of the box and what is going to the switch. Post them here. Once that is figured out we can get to what you can actually do with what you have. Note if this is going to work nicely then you will be looking at an A/C “pull chain” fan/light since those are the easiest to make work. An alternative is a HomeKit compatible WiFi fan/light if you are in the Apple infrastructure world. I have about a 3 way split between between Fan/lights with 3 wires plus a ground going to the fan/light where I have two switches and those that have 2 wires plus ground installed with either canopies or the HomeKit fan/light variety. All work. All have pros and cons.
Because you only have a single switch leg/load wire (black, white, and bare ground), if you wanted to use a switch for anything other than on and off, you would need a canopy module (VZM36) as well.
You can use a dimmer (VZM31), but you can’t run the load through the dimmer. The line and load would need to be tied together in the switch box, and then have power and neutral connected to the dimmer. You would then need to utilize the canopy module at the fan and have the powered dimmer “bound” to it via a smart home platform like Home Assistant. Binding is what allows the dimmer to talk directly to the canopy module.
Typically, a on/off switch (VZM30) is better, as you can run the load through the switch and use the air gap tab to kill power to the fan if needed, but isn’t necessary. In this setup, the On/Off switch is run in “smart bulb” mode and would act just like the dimmer, as the canopy module does all the actual dimming and the switch is just a “remote” to control it.
If you wanted to use a mmWave presence sensor dimmer (VZM32), you would connect it just like the standard dimmer.
The other thing you may need to verify is making sure your existing ceiling box is rated for a ceiling fan.
I can double check tomorrow and post pictures - I know for certain the ceiling box has 3 wires in each case though (white, black & ground) with a single switch on the wall if that helps in advance
And thank you for the proper fixture recommendation. My wife and I accidentally bought 3 fixtures with remotes and DC motors before realizing our mistake.
Gotcha, thank you! This helps a ton. I never thought to just bypass the switch to avoid the current restriction or to use an on/off like a dimmer with the canopy. I want the mmWave for presence sensing so I’m either skipping the fans or doing that + the canopy with Zigbee bindings I think