Quick question: How would the fanlinc be wired for a ceiling fan that have one of those remote control devices? Most higher quality ceiling fans come with a remote control. The remote works with a receiver that is wired into the ceiling fan. Can the fanlinc be installed with (in parallel) the remote?
I have a situation where I want a fanlinc so that I can setup scenes but don’t want the added expense of a keypadlinc to control the fan. I would like to keep the remote as the local control of the fan. I don’t think it is possible but let me know please
You can not use both. You’ll have to use one or the other. You can always pick up a remote linc to pair with the fanlinc. It is about half the price of the KeypadLinc.
- Garrett
Thanks - I was thinking along the same lines. 2 Follow upquestions: What’s the battery life on the remotelinc and does it play nice with Altsteon and your app?
I do not know how long it lasts on battery as I do not own one.
Altsteon has support and as for my app I believe it does not expose any type of controls in vera. I believe it behaves as a scene controller. So support in my app would be minimal.
- Garrett
Oops! I forgot it was only a scene (not load) controller like the kpl.
It should work fine with Altsteon. It should show up as a scene controller, and if you link the buttons to the PLM you should be able to use those events in the Vera to trigger things.
I have one of the older remotelincs that I use for development. If it only gets used once in a while, the batteries will last a LONG time. Obviously the more you use it, the shorter the amount of time the battery will last. To maximize battery life, make sure you have disabled the heartbeat function. It probably won’t add a ton of life, but it may add some.
One of the real down sides of the remotelinc support in Altsteon is that it doesn’t track how much life is left in the batteries. According to the documentation, you are supposed to get that information when you enable heartbeats. However, in my tests my remotelinc always returned that it had a full battery. I reported this to the SmartHome guys, and hopefully it is fixed in the newer units, but I don’t have one to work with. (IIRC, I left the code in to send the battery messages. So you could always add the LUA code and see if it is working now. If you do, please send a patch back. 