Ceiling Fan Speed Control Options

[Karl Peterson]

Hi again,

I am in US market (110~120V).

Looking for a way to speed control ceiling fans.

I had gotten incorrect information last year during the planning stages that I could speed control a ceiling fan with the Dimmer extension.

Turns out that you cannot, at least not with the common fans sold in this country (shaded pole). Second most common type (PSC / Permanent Split Capacitor) might work, but "it depends".

Nonetheless, I am back to the drawing board.

Thankfully I only have two to deal with, and I can use the dimmer channels for lighting loads so nothing wasted on that front.

My first thought is for a specialty 120V single phase input and output VFD. I presume someone here will appreciate how overkill (And costly) this would be. I also have concerns about high frequency noise from the motor due to the VFD. But I could gain forward/reverse control in the process which would be nice to have control over. 

My second thought is for a customized Triac fan speed controller driven by a 0-10v signal.

Nonetheless - Anyone have any good ideas here? I would appreciate any input you all may have. 

It doesn't seem like LOXONE had a ready-made answer for speed control of ceiling fans. Seems like for the most part they just relay them and let them do their thing.

[Duncan]

I think the easiest way will be to find an off the shelf motor speed controller with a 0-10v input from eBay, aliexpress or similar

[Jeffrey]

Karl - Did you find a solution for this? I'm in the same situation. 

[Deac99]

@Dunkan:  Sorry, I'm sort of a newbie here, but have the same question.  Is it right for me to assume that the second half of your answer is something like, "Then you would make say 3 or 4 buttons and program Loxone to give the corresponding output per button on the 0-10V analog output, which would then go to the motor speed controller hooked up to the ceiling fan."  

I'm assuming that is what you were thinking - let me know and if so I'll buy one of those controllers and start messing with it.

Thanks.

[Karl Peterson]

This ended up being a complicated question.

At the end of the day I did get this running, although I went through an insane amount of effort and funds to make it happen.

My fans are controlled using custom Eaton DC1 120V/Single Phase Variable Frequency Motor Drives (VFD's).

In the end the whole thing was silly. I went through multiple controller options and ceiling fans to find a combination that worked well together.

While I can do some cool things, these are not residential products, and not something that could done by your average commercial electrician, muchless a DIY-er. 

At the core of the issue is that North American fans are typically designed to be controlled by a wall-mount 3 speed controller that uses inline capacitors to regulate the line voltage and in turn control the speed.

No such 3 speed control exists in a simple contact control or 0-10v control solution. At least that I could find at the time a year ago.

If I were to do it again today, I would like bring an ISY automation controller in, build a zwave network alongside my loxone network, control my fan speeds with zwave 3 speed controllers, and control the ISY from my loxone unit.

The other way I might do it is some sort of 0-10v controlled servo and just "automate" a standard 3 speed fan controller. 

Anyways, FWIW.

- Karl P

[Jeffrey]

Thanks. I found your post when searching for 0-10v ceiling fan controls. I'm surprise they don't seem to exist. Next on my list was to look for a din rail mounted speed control, but it sound like you ran into a dead end there also. 

Insteon does makes a fan controller that inserts into the fan motor housing. I figured I might have integrate Insteon or Z-Wave though I was hoping to avoid it. 

I think I may have found a solution though: http://en.bm-cap.com/productview.aspx?id=10.

[Russ]

Hello,
I too wished to automate the control of our ceiling fan but I took an entirely different tack; I purchased a ceiling fan with no remote control, took it apart, removed the multi-position switch to control the speeds (from looking it I believe the motor had different taps for the different speeds), and wired the different speed positions to outputs on the miniserver.  Fairly easy to do (except you need to thread the new cables down into the fan assembly), works great, but is a little expensive on digital outputs as you need four, one for the light (in this case) and one for each speed.

May not be at all what you're looking for, but worked well for us.  I've since purchased a 8 way DMX relay so as to avoid using so many expensive miniserver outputs but haven't hooked it up yet.

Russ

[Deac99]

Thanks - that actually sounds like a pretty straight forward solution.  Since reading this I've started reading about DMX relays and am a little confused.  I am assuming you would need a DMX extension in order to send commands to the DMX relay - is that correct?  I'd love to see exactly what you bought and how you hooked the relays up to make it work once you get it going.

Thanks / Mark

[Karl Peterson]

That is actually really clever russ.

There are two ways that fans might control their speeds.

The first is just what you said - a multi-wind motor, where the stator has multiple windings within one assembly. Each winding has successively higher power, and thus depending on which winding you send voltage down, you will get different speeds.

The other way to do it is to use a single-wind motor, where the stator has only two windings (main and auxiliary, both powered at the same time). In this system you control the speed of the fan by using capacitors in line with the voltage feed into the motor.

You can get an understanding of that here:

http://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/217828/calculating-the-capacitor-values-to-control-ceiling-fan-speed

So, if you were willing to take your fan apart, you could absolutely control either one of these via relays and some logic. 

I should note a few things: In the end I ended up putting all of my ceiling fans that don't really need to change speed often on relays and using built in speed controls to set their speed. I just turn them on and off. This works great.

I only mucked about with the speed control in the fans used in my main spaces.

In the end it probably would have been easier to bring another automation protocol in rather than do what I did. But hey - my EE friends are all bemused by my creative misuse of VFDs, so thats worth something :)

Finally, if I was in a more modern space I would talk to Big Ass Fans about their Essence product. While it is expensive, it does have built-in options for 0-10V control.

-Karl P

[Duncan]

Deac99

yes you are right - to control any dmx device you need a loxone dmx extension, but you dont need loxone dmx devices. you can use any combination of mains dimmers, constant voltage or current dimmers for leds, relays/switches etc.

all makes of dmx are interchangeable and it allows you to have a much more distributed arrangement - so for your fan example, you might take a single mains voltage and dmx signal (using cat5 say) to a fan location, and put a small 3 channel dmx relay device in the ceiling or close by, so your mains and dmx signal go to the relays and your 4 or 5 wires to the fan only go from the relays to the fan rather than all the way back to a cental loxone location.

a similar arrangement works well for underfloor heating where you have multiple mains switched manifold actuators - rather than running multiple mains cables back to loxone relays, you just have a local power supply, dmx and dmx relay block with the required number of channels, and keep all the wiring close and short between the relays and actuators.

[Russ]

Yes, what he said.   ...and what I'm doing with lighting; so I just put a power plug somewhere close to where I'm going to have a dmx controller, and then plug my lighting into this.  There are dmx switches, RGB (and RGBW) LED strip dimmers, regular dimmers, etc.  I decided to run the dmx signal over my ethernet, so also put a wall cat5 or catg6 outlet to carry the dmx signal.  I'm usually plugging 2-3 dmx devices into each power plug and daisy chaining the dmx signals among them.

[Jedi Tek'Unum]

For those that can build their own, here is some useful info. Should be easy to update the design and control with 0-10v or anything really.

[Deac99]

Thank You!  I'm going to have to get an extension and then some various eBay specials to mess around with.  This looks like a great method to reduce the expense of I/O extensions.

[RSin]

I see a while ago on this post people were about to try a few things. Would anyone care to share a solution?

I will be using it for bathroom extraction fans. It has N & L connections that you can connect to a speed controller but which one?

I'd prefer not to pull the fan apart, presumably there must be something that can vary a 230v supply.

I'm happy to go the DMX route. Could you use the infamous DMX302 dimmer? I think that the rating (1A) might not be upto the fan load (3A spur in the manual) although the fuse is to protect the fan, it doesn't state that it draws that much....in fact its 120W so only about 0.5A. Would you typically get a high inrush upto the 3A?

thanks.

[Jedi Tek'Unum]

I'm not familiar with 230v exhaust fans but if they are anything like the ones in the US you cannot use dimmers to control them. AC (inductive load) motors are controlled by inline capacitance. AC dimmers work by chopping up how much of the sine way gets through to the device.

[Jedi Tek'Unum]

In my new home build I'm using an inline-style setup using a Fantech EC motor. It is controlled with 0-10V. Perhaps somebody makes a 230V fan like that.

[Rob]

I didn't like the idea of using 240v extract fans so am thinking about something like this