So, we have an exhaust fan at the roof and it doubles as a kitchen hood fan. The controls used to be on the hood, similar on what you’d have on a cheap desk fan with buttons 1-3 and only one can be pressed at a time. Some time ago a plastic broke from the mechanism and it allowed two buttons to be pressed at the same time and it fried the transformer by connecting two of the different voltage outputs together. I just bypassed the transformer and there’s now just a single on-off switch, so the fan is either off or at full blast.
Now we’re remodeling the kitchen and I’d like to get smart controls on the fan, as it’d be nice to have it automatically turn on after shower or sauna to remove the moisture and obviously there needs to be controls in the kitchen to turn the fan up when cooking.
I’ve searched around but haven’t found a suitable controller for it which would have any kind of digital input. Modern fans around here seem to have logic built in and they can be controlled either via propietary systems or via 1-10VDC control, but as the current fan works I’d rather not throw several hundred euros for a new fan and some more for modifying the existing mounts at the roof.
There’s all kinds of triac-controllers which would do the trick, but all I’ve found have only manual controls. So, does the hive mind have suggestions on what I could use?
I haven’t checked the fan, but I’m guessing it’s few hundred watts at max and there’s absolutely no smart features in it. Give it some AC voltage and it spins, that’s it. I’m happy with either few pre-set speeds or full variable via triac/whatever. I’ve got home assistant with z-wave running, but zigbee/thread/matter is fine too as I’m planning a migration to newer standard. For control esphome is an option too, but for the high voltage side I’d like to get something proper from a reputable vendor instead of soldering something together or getting a solid state relay for PWM via aliexpress.
Your kitchen cooking exhaust is also your bathroom ventilation? That’s one hell of a weird combo…
Anyway, a PWM controllable SSR that can take control voltages delivered by an ESP should do the trick and be completely safe when connected properly.
Otherwise something like a Shelly dimmer v4 will handle transformer loads up to 200w, maybe that could work?
Your kitchen cooking exhaust is also your bathroom ventilation?
It’s somewhat common in here for houses built/remodeled around 1990s. There’s one “tree” of air ducts around and a single bigger fan at the roof to exchange air at the whole house. I’d like to get rid of it, but doing it properly would require opening walls and ceilings quite a bit so it’s going to stay in place.
I’ve looked at dimmers but none of them seem to be built for a electric motor load so I don’t think I’ll go with that route. It might work, sure, but as it’s not rated for that kind of load I’ll rather get something which is actually meant for electric motor loads and big current spikes they come with.
Then you’re probably looking at a VFD of some sort, that will be expensive and likely require some fuckery with an ESP to interface with it anyway.
It’s somewhat common in here for houses built/remodeled around 1990s. There’s one “tree” of air ducts around and a single bigger fan at the roof to exchange air at the whole house.
Don’t you also need to control some sort of flow valves regulating flow from different sections of this system? Or is it just all one open system that pull equally from all sections all the time?
Don’t you also need to control some sort of flow valves regulating flow from different sections of this system? Or is it just all one open system that pull equally from all sections all the time?
Not quite equally. Rooms have manually adjustable valves and the whole system should be balanced to have some kind of recommended airflow on each room with a inlet. But that obviously works only on paper, specially since that style of ventilation commonly don’t have proper paths for replacement air (or at least ours don’t) and no matter how balanced the system might be opening a window will mess that up. As mentioned, I’d gladly get rid of it, but any kind of replacement would be a massive job both in labor and in materials.
The Sonoff iFan03 ought to do what you want, but it’s WiFi. Supposedly, you can flash new firmware to get rid of the eWeLink cloud app, but I haven’t been succesful with that yet. (I may have fried the serial port?)
Idk know if you can still get the ifan03, but I personally use an ifan04-H (230v 50hz) with esphome flashed on it.
Ifan04 seems promising, assuming it can be flashed to non-cloud dependent firmware. I need to check specs of my fan, 2A might not be enough for my use case.
