Hacking a Hampton Bay Fan Remote

Must replaced a fan remote that has worn out buttons. The old one was about to go into recycling until I thought that it might be possible to wire up contact closures that would work the buttons via some Z-wave dry contact closure device or relay.

Anyone had luck with this, or have a product to recommend?

Just confirmed I can use a jumper to make the old contacts work. Looks like full control would require at least four closures, and one of them would preferably have programmable durations of closure to manage dim commands, but I think that could be trouble since there won't be any way for Indigo to know what dim state the light is in, since manual control will still be in the mix.

I did this several years ago with two ceiling fans and a Smartinet 4 input controller http://smartenit.com/product/ezio4o/ (before there were dedicated ceiling fan controllers). Looks like they're discontinued. Just simulated some button presses on the remote control. No light control was desired just fan control. I haven't seen any multiple dry contact controllers yet with z-wave.

Please let me know if you figure something out - this is something I have been pondering for awhile. I would like to put a fan in the star way to the basement to pull cool air up in the summer and push hot air down in the winter. The goal is to control it via indigo so that it is automatic and cycles with my hvac.

I thought about wiring a remote up with a Arduino and control it through the Arduino plugin. I have just started playing around with Arduino so not sure if it is possible or not.

If you can find relays with coils that are within the power limits of the GPIOs (33 ma @5 V I think) power limits, Karl's PiBeacon plugin has the capabilities to make as many separate indigo on/off devices as you would like.

All the arduino relays on amazon work with gpio on the rpi.
Using an esp and opto coupler I could fit everything into the handheld remotes for old fans. Then with the arduino plugin you can " press" any button on the remote. But the setup I tricky. The remote uses likely 9 v and you need to measure the which way you need to short the connection ( to 0 or to 9v).


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