ZigBee Fan Switch | Project Zephyr (Blue Series)

Possible! Just update firmware and disable delay! You lose scenes (except 1 presses) but in some instances that is very worth it!

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It seems like Inovelli has done about the best they can for controlling the physical load by allowing this timeout to be configured (or disabled) for multi-tap detection. I believe there might still be an issue about how long you need to hold a button before the dimming action happens - I think everyone thought the configurable delay would apply here also, but it didn’t (@Eric_Inovelli - am I remembering this correctly? Did it get fixed already?)
However, it might be nice if the switch did sent some kind of ‘raw’ button pushed/released messages to the hub (as well as the current messages that reflect the actions applied to the load - SBM excepted). If the scenes are just for normal light on/off/dim functions, then they’d need to implement almost exactly the same timeout logic that the switch does - so not much point. But there might well be other use cases where the scene can react immediately to a push.

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Will/can there be some sort of icon on the switch indicating that it is for the fan in the room? I know with the current fan/light combo switch some visitors have had trouble figuring it out(… yeah… I know it’s really not that difficult and has icons on it).

I think this is still an outstanding issue. @EricM_Inovelli is this correct?

I know it was requested and it took me way too long to understand what was being asked for though haha. I’m pretty sure we had to draw the line due to space on the Z-Wave chip as well as exhausting the firmware engineers who already think we’re crazy for all these small improvements. But, it’s definitely something that should be tweaked and Maycock can capture this in our GitHub for future enhancements.

I’ll definitely add this to our ZigBee/Matter line and any future Z-Wave 700 Series switches.

You all are way too smart for me. I have such a hard time understanding these things lol. I’d like to go back to coloring between the lines with my crayons please.

@EricM_Inovelli – tagging the real brains here.

Interesting – we hadn’t thought about adding an icon, but I can see the draw, especially as there will be two identical looking switches next to each other.

@anon88759745, what do you think?

Yep. I put it in git for a future enhancement.

Do you mean extra scenes that are different from the ones that match the normal light functions? Can you explain this a little bit more?

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Yeah, I can see how that would be helpful. We’ve looked into laser engraving before but the project was put on hold, thread here. Eric and I are gonna look back into it and give you guys an update.

@Eric_Inovelli I do have another delay logic related QOL improvement that shouldn’t run into the same limitations. If the config button is pressed, then the top paddle is pressed, the config button press should be ignored, then the normal logic for the top paddle should be processed. I’ve noticed that I have two light switches (in bathrooms) I’m batting about 500 on, because I hit the danged config button accidentally on my way through the doorway. Nothing like having to turn around and hit the on switch again when you have to pee.

Why not incorporate a small paperwhite LCD display into the paddle, and let everyone pink their own icon/label??? :rofl:

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Oh yeah definitely – we actually talked about this on our last call along with lowering the profile of the config button :slight_smile:

They are confident they can make this happen via firmware.

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Project Update: I just updated the project and good news, we’ve made the deposit on tooling and we should have 3D renders by the end of next week. As for how the switch works in a 3-Way setting, we went back and forth, but ultimately decided to accept the design of it only working with an aux switch. Here’s why:

It would add an extra $1-2 to the design

In most houses we’ve seen (including our own) the 3-Way scenarios are non-dedicated fan only setups. In other words, if there is a 3-Way setup, it’s typically a situation where the switch controls both the fan and light and this switch is designed for controlling the fan only.

In the rare case you have a fan only switch on one side and a fan only switch on the other side, we figured the user experience would be that you’d want to control the fan speed from both sides and if you keep a dumb switch, you’d only have on/off control

We figured it would be more beneficial to have non-neutral compatibility and paid the extra for that feature (still confirming this is possible, but early signs point to yes) vs the dumb switch compatibility in a 3-Way

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@anon88759745 @Eric_Inovelli any idea when you will start pre-orders? I would rather have the Z-Wave fan switch but this will work as a temp until the Red Series fan switch comes. I understand still kind of early but thought I would ask.

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I see you have DC fans on your features list. I was under the impression that DC fans all use proprietary controls. Do you have an idea how DC control might work? Would it be tied to a specific brand of fans? (Modern Forms fans have separate RF controllers in the canopy that might be replaceable.)

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We definitely want to have preorders up as soon as possible because it will help give us a better idea on demand for our first order (Plus I want to show my friends/family how cool these switches are). However, we don’t want to over-promise then under-deliver on the switch so there’s a few things we want to verify before opening up preorders:

  • Will these work properly with Hue?
  • Can these be OTA updated to Matter (it’s looking like the answer is no right now, which is not we were told originally from SiLabs)?
  • If they can’t be OTA’d, will Zigbee 3.0 work with Matter Hubs?
  • Are the key selling points verified (notifications, scenes, smart bulb mode, etc.)

We should have the answers during our beta testing, which will likely take place in a couple of months. A more firm date will be given once we receive the official timeline from our manufacturer.

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We have this on our checklist as people were asking the same thing with the Fan & Light Switch but haven’t officially verified if this is possible yet with the manufacturer. I just put this question out in our Zephyr teams chat with the manufacturer and will see if it was added in their initial feedback to us.

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Thinking about this a bit more…what is probably the most feasible solution if direct DC motor control is not not a possibility, is to mimic the smartbulb controller mode from the light switches.

This would require a DC fan that has built in “smarts,” which most of them do now. Then you could have the switch provide constant power to the fan, the paddle becomes a scene controller to talk to the hub, which then sends speed commands to the fans integrated controller.

This would work with my Modern Forms fans and most of the other DC Wi-fi enabled fans I am aware of (Haiku, Home Decorators collection from Home Depot)

Q: How many speed levels will the controller support? Similar to dimming (99 minus the dead space that tends to be at the bottom?) Or will it be like other smart fan speed controllers (Leviton’s zwave, Lutron’s Caseta or RadioRA2) that support only 3, 4 or 7 speeds other than off?

My votes for Zephyr in order of importance

  • Color paddle options. White is a non-starter for us.
  • Fan icon on paddle. Nice to have a visual difference for fans vs lights.
  • Native support with major hubs for control. Zigbee fan controllers don’t seem super common, so getting native support with ST, Hubitat, HomeSeer, etc ASAP makes a big difference in adoption.
  • The “new style” small/less raised config button. Saves me from sanding down the production ones. :slight_smile:
  • We’re fine with simple 3 way options. We have exactly zero 3 way wired fans. Adding cost for fancier 3 way options doesn’t get our vote.
  • We don’t need any scene or multi tap support on a fan switch. We’d just be using it to control fan on/off/speed.

Looking forward to the project!

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multi tap support is always a welcome feature. especially for us who don’t have available space for installing a separate switch.

nevertheless, to use it just as a regular fan switch without the scene control, it would be enough using one of the generic device handlers which don’t enable said feature.

It’ll it support 3 speeds - low, medium, and high but we are looking into ways to make it up to 7 speeds. We’re not sure at this moment if that requires different parts or not. Also, we are doing color paddles for the Fan Switch :smiley: They’ll be the same colors as our other switches.

For the record, 3 is PLENTY for me.

Plus breeze.

Would love to see high breeze where it alternates between L/M and H. Right now breeze is only L/M on 36’s as far as I’m aware.

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Project Update: Discussed with our manufacturer about the switch being a 7 speed switch but that would require another capacitor. Unfortunately because of this limit, the Fan Switch will be handle 3 speeds: low, medium, and high.

Matter - while its delay is disappointing our chip is still on schedule for a Q4 release, we are still moving ahead with Zigbee. Eric wrote about more on our strategy with Matter in the Project New Horizons thread.

TLDR: If you still want a Zigbee switch, you’re in the clear. If you want a Matter switch, you could hard-wire the update in or we suggest you wait until mid-2022 to purchase. The first production run of the Fan Switch will use the MG21 chipset which is not able to update OTA to Matter. We’ve been told that Zigbee switches will also be backwards compatible with any hub using Matter. We’ll share more details about upgrading to Matter and hard-wiring the update in once we have more details.

Okay something cool - we received the 3D rendering file for the switch. Check it out!

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