Some general questions before I buy, I think i know the answers, but I’d like to confirm.
I have 2 ceiling fans on my patio wired to a single switch. Since its 2 fans on one switch, low and medium speeds are a bit too low. I mostly expected this, but theyre a bit lower than i expected, so im looking at the canopy modules to resolve. so if i understand correctly, i can get 2 of the modules, install them, convert the switch to ‘smart’ mode, and somehow (i dont need help with this, just havent gotten that far…yet) bind the switch to both canopy modules in HA. Does this seem about right?
Some other questions:
Since its a binding, can i use a regular on/off switch in smart mode instead so i can re-use the fan one somewhere else on an actual fan?
Also, the fans were pre-wired with a separate switch for the lights, so can a second switch be set up with a binding to the lights for the fans? I guess the question is can 2 switches be be ‘bound’ to one canopy module? Worst case i can probably set up some kind of scene or automation in HomeAssistant, but unless i mis-understand how bindings work, the binding should work independant of HA so long as Thread is still going.
I know thats a lot, so any feedback is appreciated.
I would first check the fan wiring before you start swapping things out. When wired in parallel, you should NOT see any appreciable drop in fan speed performance with two fans wired to one switch.
Sometimes fans get wired in series. That’s not the commonly accepted way of wiring two fans together, however. When that occurs, the voltage to the fans drops, which accounts for the low fan speeds.
If my suspicion is correct and you are able to rewire so that you get acceptable speeds from the dumb switch, you won’t need canopies. Since you already have two switches, one for the fan and one for the light, you can just use 2 smart switches and no canopies if your configuration is a neutral config with the line being first fed to the switch box.
To summarize what I have read, to be sure I understand…
You currently have 2 fans running off a single Inovelli Fan Switch (assuming VTM35-SN as you are inquiring about the White series), and it is to be believed that because there are 2 fans on a single switch that it is affecting the Low and Medium speeds on those fans.
If this is what is causing the issue, then likely adding in individual canopy modules for each fan may remedy your issue. (I can’t confirm that it IS causing this issue, but for the sake of your argument we’ll assume it is so.)
When running in Smart Bulb mode, an On/Off switch should act similar enough to a dedicated Fan switch, so there should be no issue in swapping it out to use the Fan switch elsewhere.
As far as binding goes, I have no experience binding Matter over Thread devices, but in my experience with the Blue Zigbee switches, you can bind two separate switches to the Canopy Module to control the lights and fan from two different switches.
Are you intending to use the Canopy Modules to only control the fan portion of your ceiling fans? Or are you intending to connect it to both fan and lights as it sounds like in your question?
If you intend to connect it to both fan and lights, and bind two switches to the module, you will want to make sure that whatever load wire you have feeding the module (either the switch leg from the light switch or fan switch) is connected properly at the switches. Neither the Dimmers or Fan switches support BOTH inductive and resistive loads, so if you continue to use one of those to feed power to your fan, you will need to attach the Load wire directly to the Line wire and not run the load through the switch. If you end up swapping in an On/Off switch, this WILL support a mixed load and can have the load run through the switch allowing you the potential to kill power through the air gap tab if needed to reset or power cycle the Canopy Modules.
Interesting, I thought the fan switch, on settings lower than high, output a limited amount of power, and with 2 fans, it gets divided between the two.
FAQ says: (and this why I expected this behavior)
Yes, you can use this switch with multiple ceiling fans as long as the total load is below the max amperage (2.5A).
However, there is a limitation in that your high speed will work fine, but the low and medium speeds will be reduced by half due to those speeds being regulated by capacitors, which will limit the output power.
You read it right. Seems like the big gotcha is the mixed load, so I could maybe swap both for on/off, put one in smart mode so it never cuts power (except air gap), and use the second as just a button with no load connected? Let’s say I were to swap both to on/off, use the ‘fan’ load wire to supply the canopy modules, then the second ‘light’ switch would have just line, neutral, and no load connected? Then I’d need to figure out the bindings (that will be the interesting part I think).
I’m also not completely set on using the canopy modules for the light, the difference is pretty minimal, 1 bulb on the module vs 2 on the switch (in fact, I think typing this may have just convinced me that doing that part is more trouble than it’s worth, even though it almost no trouble at all)
If there is no load connected on either of the switches, neither of them need to be swapped out to On/Off switches, but if you wanted to run the load through a switch to use the air gap in case of an issue where you need to kill power to the fans, then that switch in particular would need to be an On/Off switch.
You can leave your lights connected to the existing switch and not bother hooking up that portion to the Canopy Module (just be sure to cap the wires off), and only connect the fan portion. Then, you would just need to bind the switch to both modules (or otherwise create an automation) to control the fan portion of both of your ceiling fans.
If you are only doing the fans on both, then there is no need to swap out any of the switches, or otherwise do anything in the switch box, as the current Fan switch has no issues with the inductive load of the Canopy Modules if you are not using it to control any lights. You just need to go into the settings and enable “Smart Fan” mode so the Canopy Modules get full time power and you can still use the air gap on the Fan switch.
do you mean bind or do you mean have an automation in HA? Binding in HA is a little hit or miss with matter. You can also put a switch in smart build mode and use the little config button to trigger toggling the light on the canoy module on/off
Yes, that’s correct. When I posted, it wasn’t clear to me that you already had a fan switch. What I was describing would be true if you had two fans with a dumb switch wired in series.
The reason that you get full speed on high with the fan switch and two fans is because the high setting does not use either of the two capacitors in the switch.