Best device to control an AC ceiling fan?

danone

Just wonder if I can pick up anyone's brain here.
I am after some ideas of how to control an AC fan, either via z-wave, zigbee or anything else that Homey supports.

What I have:
I do have an 240VAC ceiling fan (85 watts) which currently is controlled by switching on a capacitor similar like this one. Well, there are two capacitors in one housing.

Basically it give me three speeds, low, medium and full. At full speed the capacitor is bypassed, the fan runs straight on mains (240VAC here in Australia) Wiring diagram as in the screenshot below, in the wall I have a 4 way rotary switch: stop (0), low (3), medium (2), high (1).



I tried the Aeotec nano dimmer as it claims that it can control AC fans with a power of maximum 100W.



It works, but the motor hums like hell!! The AC motor supposed to be of inductive load type for the dimmer. I changed through all the modes by writing on the parameter 130 (load type) resistive, capacitive, inductive. No joy.... the motor still hums more or less.
Tried both with and without the Aeotec bypass. Of course, without the above capacitor wired in.
The fan motor runs dead quite when either straight on mains power or when using the capacitor.
Anything I am doing wrong here?

An idea I have is to use two Fibaro relays, one double the other single, and simulate the currently four way rotary switch I have and switching in between the mains and the two capacitors.
Create conditions that never two contacts are ON in the same time. This won't give a 0 to 100% fan control but I am still happy with three defined speeds.
- OFF - both Fibaro relay are off.
- LOW - Q1 from single relay is TRUE (switch first capacitor) and both Q1 and Q2 from double relay are FALSE
- MEDIUM - Q1 from single relay is FALSE, Q1 from double relay is TRUE(switch second capacitor) and Q2 from double relay is FALSE
- HIGH - Q1 from single relay is FALSE, Q1 from double relay is FALSE and Q2 from double relay is TRUE (power to the fan straight from the mains)

Any other ideas please? Thank you in advance!!

caseda

Your fan is most likely not designed for control with PWM what the dimmer uses for fan control.
The bypass is only meant if the power rate is too low with for example leds, so that won't matter at all.

Don't have any other options that I can come up with though in z-wave.
There are no 3 relay module for z-wave, at least that I know of.

There are wifi modules (Relais based) that you could try which are fairly cheap, though they should need an app created, or they might be controllable with the http app

danone

Thanks. I didn't know that aeotec dimmer output was pwm.
Got it working with two relays (single and double) as above and a set of flows.

caseda

Pretty much all (in wall) dimmers use PWM the only dimmer I know of that doesn't is the qubino and kaku 0-10v dimmer.
Though they don't work on mains power, since the size would be too big for in wall usage.

danone

caseda said:

Pretty much all (in wall) dimmers use PWM the only dimmer I know of that doesn't is the qubino and kaku 0-10v dimmer.
Though they don't work on mains power, since the size would be too big for in wall usage.

Yes, I should have looked for their working principle before even trying. Thanks for clarifying.
Fan was existing so I had to live with it.
Using now two Fibaro double relays and a momentary switch wired into S2 on one of the relay, this gives me also manual control over the fan.
Then few VD for stop, low med and high speed. So far so good.