I am looking for hardware suggestions regarding an indirect switching (or dimming) function for a ventilator-attached lamp.
Here is the context. I am replacing a large ceiling lamp with a Fanimation ventilator that includes its own lamp. The original lamp used to be controlled through two three-way switches that were each part of a separate 5-gang electrical box. These three-way switches are no longer usable: the ventilator needs to be continuously powered, as it is controlled through its own remote control both for fan speed and light intensity.
However, the Fanimation remote control cannot be mounted in place of a Decora switch within the 5-gang electrical boxes. For that reason, I would like to replace the original light switches with Decora-styles virtual switches or dimmers that would allow me to control the fan light indirectly. Specifically, these virtual switches would be sending signals (wifi,or Smartthings-compatible or other) that OH would then receive and interpret as requests to switch the fan light or change its intensity.
The link between OH and the Fanimation fan light can be triggered through IFTTT. It is also possible to trigger it through Google Assistant, but I don’t know if there is any way to have OH request some actions from Google Asssistant (the opposite is of course possible).
But for time being, I would like start with suggestions for a Decora-style virtual switch that I could use to send requests to OH.
The Fanimation app (called Fansync) is claimed to be compatible with Amazon Echo and Google Assistant. They used to mention SmartThings as well but when I checked with the company, they said “only through IFTTT”, which I guess is a bizarre way to say “no”.
Can you confirm that OH has no known way to request Google Assistant to trigger a particular device?
Otherwise, do I understand that there is still a way for OH to access IFTTT?
Perhaps one possibility would be to go through Smartthings. I have a Smartthings hub and I am using the OH Smartthings binding to control some Smartthings-enabled devices. As it turns out, IFTT can access Smartthings accounts.
The only missing part would then seem to be a Smartthings-enabled switch (such as e.g. a TP-Link Kasa switch). One assumption here is that this Smartthings-enabled swith would be able to work without controlling any actual load. Its function would only be to update its status on the Smartthings hub any time either of them is manually toggled. The Smarthings hub would thereby send updates to both OH and IFTTT. In the latter case, the effect would be trigger an on/off action on the fan lamp through the IFTTT-connected Fanimation site.
A pretty complicated way of doing things, but a) would it really work? and b) is there any simpler way?
