What more can you ask from a fan? They give us air in hot summers, and they don’t ask for much in return… Compared to the typical air conditioner, which consumes hundreds of watts, even more than a thousand, a pedestal fan is happy with less than 100, usually . Does it make sense to make them smart? Does it at least make more sense than the fact that I am writing this in the middle of January, when this same fan is already stored until summer comes again?
As they say, “everything has already been invented”… There are already fan models with Wi-Fi that can be connected to your home automation system. Simple, you could pay from 70 to 100 euros and boom, you would already have a smart fan. But that’s not how things are done here at El Programador Ibérico 😏.
Let’s start by disassembling the fan and seeing how it works. The front button panel has one input wire (which comes from the live wire) and three output wires, and when each of the buttons is pressed, the circuit between the input cable and one of the output cables is closed, leaving the rest unconnected. We will have to replicate this same operation: receive an order from the home automation server and activate one of 3 outputs, depending on the speed we want, deactivating the others.