I received my white fan canopies (x2) and white 2 in 1 switches (x2) today. I installed the first fan canopy and it paired fine giving me control of the fan and lights.
I left the canopy in defaults, which I understood to be lights on/off (non dimmer) and fan speed change.
The fan speed change works as expected, however the light tile was presented in HomeKit as dimmable, is this expected behavior or was the canopy actually defaulted to lights being dimmable? It’s back together now, it’s almost easier to just buy dimmable bulbs at this stage than get back to the canopy to reconfigure. I can tell it’s trying to dim as if I set it at 10% then the bulbs are flickering mess (they not dimmable, so thats expected).
So my basic question is, is may canopy configured incorrectly? If I reconfigure it to on/off will it actually present as on/off rather than dimmable in Homekit?
On to the switch:
I paired the switch to HomeKit then configured it to smart bulb mode using the up paddle and 4x button C presses.
In Homekit i am presented with 2 main tiles:
The first being the switch itself, where I can configure, single press, double press and long press for all 3 switches (paddle up/down and config). I can assign Homekit scenes and accessories to these and they work fine.
The 2nd tile presents as a ‘light’:
In there are there I can see the LED bar color selection presented in the lower right and above it that slider seems to represent the LED bar brightness. I suppose this is the ‘light’ I would use if I wanted to tie it to automations? What is the ‘light’ on the left for, since the switch is configured in smart bulb mode and is meant to default to on/off when in smart bulb mode what is that dimmer for?
I’m in the same boat as you!! I just got mine all hooked up and paired and ow I’m confused on how to control one with the other. For now I have the config button to control the light.
Hopefully we get some clarification soon! This is really gonna bring down the spousal approval rating! lol
So today I installed a second fan canopy, before I put this one back together I made sure the canopy was set to light on/off, before I paired it. Despite this the canopy still appears to tell Homekit that it supports dimming.
Is this an issue with the canopy firmware or a Homekit deficiency?
It’s neither. Though the canopy is in on / off mode it still appears as a dimmable light. Any dim level besides 0 will be “on” at full power.
As far as I know this is done because hubs cannot reinterview the device to k ow that it has changed from a dimmable light to a non dimmable one. This is consistent with how the Z-Wave and Zigbee ones work as well.
Thanks Rohan, that makes sense. I had suspected that the canopy couldn’t change its presented capabilities after pairing which is why I thought forcing the on/off before pairing might make a difference.
I’m pretty sure that the first one I installed was in dimmer mode as default though as when I turn that light off it fades to off, where as the one I installed today that I set the config to on off rather than assuming the default just goes off immediately with no fade.
With the current software, it does not matter what mode (dimmer or on/off) the light portion of the Fan Canopy is in when you pair it with Homekit (Apple Home), it will pair as a dimmable light. The only way I know to have a white dimmer or the light portion of a fan canopy appear as a switch in Apple Home is to pair them with Home Assistant and use a template to create a switch from the light entity which is then in turn published to Homekit. That is what I do with all of the white dimmers and fan canopies I have that are not used as dimmers (which is most of them),
One of the more experienced HA users here posted a sample template when the issue was first raised a few months ago which I use.
OK… Hoping y’all can help me here. I have the fan/light canopy and the switch hooked up, thanks to Bry’s help. My setup here…
Now I have questions!
I have the config button turn on the fan to 25% if it is off, and turn off if it is on.
Then I have coded the double-press to cycle the speed up to 100 in 4 steps.
Get Fan Rotation Speed
If Rotation speed less than 25
set Fan to 25
otherwise
if Fan Rotation speed is less than 50
set Fan to 50
otherwise
if Fan Rotation speed is less than 75
set Fan to 75
otherwise
set Fan to 100
endif endif endif
It works... is there a more elegant way to do it?
I have coded the up paddle to turn the light on, and down paddle for off.
But how can I get it set up so that holding the paddle brightens or dims the light?
This is the way all normal switches work, where the light load is simply connected to the switch… so I’d like to have the same functionality. But how? (I don’t use HomeAssistant or any of the other apps. My preference is obviously native Homekit. I’m open to Eve if that’s a solution)
This seems like the most basic functionality. Dumb dimmable lights in the dumb fan. Am I missing something really simple? (like a combo of configuration presses, smartbulb mode or something?)
