- Hey, guys.
Today we're gonna turn this dumb fan into a smart fan
with a Lutron Caseta fan controller.
Hey
(phone beeps)
Turn on the master bedroom fan.
(phone beeps)
- [Siri] Okay.
- Let's do it.
Welcome back friends.
If this is your first time here, my name is Eric.
If you're into smart home, home automation,
and especially HomeKit,
you're definitely in the right place.
Today's video is a part of my HomeKit series,
but Lutron Caseta also works with Lady A and Google Home,
so if you're into those platforms,
stick around for the entire video.
I'm gonna show you how to install this into your dumb fan,
but there are some requirements.
Your dumb fan does have to be hardwired
to a hard wire switch,
and that switch has to have a neutral wire.
If you don't have a neutral wire,
unfortunately, this will not work.
Now FYI, I will be removing that old fan remote
that I had installed back in 2013.
These things are so dated and these things are so hard
to install 'cause you only had like a inch to do it.
I'm also gonna be removing my Ecobee switch and dimmer
which I installed a couple of years ago on this channel.
Which means I'm gonna be taking it down from three gangs
or three switches down to two gangs or two switches
which means I'm gonna have to do the dreaded drywall work.
Aaargh!
I hate drywall.
Paul Peck, where are you?
To get started installing the switch,
make sure you turn off the power so you're safe.
In that any moment,
you're not sure what you are doing with electricity,
make sure you call electrician and hire them
because you don't wanna be messing around with electricity.
Now go ahead and make sure your fan is properly wired.
You don't need anything special in there.
You just want direct full power to your fan.
I'm gonna have to take this remote out
because this is what reduces the power
and to have different speeds.
So I'm just gonna disconnect this
and disconnect the black wire
and the white wire and the ground wire altogether.
Tuck everything back in, seal it back up
and we're good to go there.
Like I mentioned before,
I'm gonna be taking this three-gang box
down to a two-gang box.
The Miller switch is a dimmer switch
so it doesn't actually have any additional hard wire.
It actually just taken the load from the Ecobee switch
on the left.
So when I'm doing this, I'm actually slowing down here.
I'm gonna take some photos,
I'm gonna record exactly what wire is which.
So you can see here on the fan control,
it actually tells you which one is to the power,
which one's to the fan.
And you can see that the white wire,
a lot of times white means neutral,
but in this case, this is actually your line wire,
where the black wire is your load wire.
And these are marked properly by a licensed electrician
so I know exactly what these wires are.
So job well done to the licensed electrician.
And then the yellow and the green one is your ground.
So I'm gonna be disconnecting this.
And as I mentioned earlier,
the fan control does require a neutral wire,
which you can usually tell that it's neutral
because it's a bunch of wires all tied in together
in the back of the box like it is here.
Now in most situations,
this is where you would disconnect everything
and hook up to new switch once you can identify the wires,
but in my particular case, I had to disconnect everything
and undo the entire box.
Take out the box 'cause I'm taking down from a three gang
back down to a two gang
and then do the dreaded drywall work.
While this is drying,
I'm gonna go ahead and hook up the wires.
You guys can go ahead, leave comments below
and say how bad the drywall patch looks.
I know, I know, I'm not good at drywall.
I will be sanding this down
then you guys can see the finished product at the end.
But let's go ahead and hook up this switch.
So first things first,
let's get the line wire to the screw.
This switch is a little different than most
where it has a combinations of a screw
and a wire connections.
So if you remember, the white wire with the K on it
is actually the line wire so that gets tied to the screw.
The yellow wire is for load so that gets tied to the black.
The ground, it goes to the green
and the white goes to neutral.
Now I'm gonna go ahead and hook up the other switch.
I'm actually gonna be using a Lutron dimmer switch
which are awesome because it's one
of the only dimmer switches out there available for HomeKit
that doesn't require a neutral wire.
It's super easy to install.
I'm not gonna review it here,
but if you guys have any questions,
let me know down below.
By the way, if you are using two Lutron switches in the box,
you will have to break off the little wings on the side.
It's super easy to do, you just bend them back and forth
and they pop right off.
Now that everything's hooked up,
go ahead and push the wires in nice, neat,
make sure nothing is touching,
nothing falls out of the wire nuts.
And once you do that, go back down, turn the power back on
and come up and test it out.
Turn on like a medium.
Then now I can plug up all the way.
Now that we know the hard wire switches
are working properly, we can play with the dimming
on the fan control.
It is very similar to a dimmer
where you can reduce the light
but instead of reducing the light,
you're gonna slow down the fan.
So it has five controls, has high, medium-high,
medium, low and off.
Now the button in the middle
is to quickly move to your favorite setting.
To program that,
all you need to do is turn on your favorite setting,
hold down that middle button for 10 seconds,
and it will remember what that favorite setting is.
And then when you come back, you press that center button
and it will automatically go to that setting.
Now this is not much of a smart switch
without having a awesome smart app
and being able to control it via your phone,
or even one the voice assistant.
So let's go ahead and download the Lutron app,
connect it to the bridge and get this thing started.
Once you have the bridge directly connected to your router,
go ahead and go into the app, sign in
and it's gonna look for that bridge.
It might take a few minutes.
I think it took about four or five minutes to locate it
and then they will ask you to push the button
on the back of the bridge
and then it will also have you scan the QR code
or HomeKit code on the bottom of the bridge.
And then ask you to add accessory,
select what type of accessory it is,
here we're doing fan control.
You hold the bottom button on the physical switch
for about 10 seconds until light starts blinking.
You then have to assign it to a room,
hit next and that's it, you're done.
It is super, super easy.
You have five controls,
you have high, medium-high, medium, low and off,
which are the same controls in HomeKit.
If you go into your Home app, you'll have to find the fan.
Fortunately, the room didn't come over,
even though the lights did.
So once you find it,
you'll have the same controls, same five controls,
and you can control it from HomeKit, from Siri,
and you can also control this from Alexa,
which you just go to the Alexa app,
you go into Skills
and find the Lutron skill, you put in your password,
username, password, and it'll sync the account.
Same thing with Google.
You can sync it with Google Home.
Just go in there, add the Lutron synchronization,
put in your username and password and that's it.
You might have to go into those apps
to assign it to the correct room
but once it's in there you can ask Lady A in Google
to control your fan.
And now it's time for my least favorite part.
(upbeat music)
Ooh!
And now that's done,
I can officially say I'm actually pretty happy
with my drywall work.
Thank you to Paul Pecks Drywall,
who I can now officially wear his hat
because I can halfway do a halfway decent job on drywall.
Thank you, Paul Peck.
But when it comes to the Lutron Caseta hat,
it's all about Modern Day Tech
and I gotta tell you, I love this switch.
These things are awesome.
Awesome, awesome, awesome.
They are expensive, I think they're 50, 60 bucks each
plus you need the bridge which, another 50, 60 bucks
unless you buy a package.
So it is extremely expensive
but is one of the only HomeKit-compatible fan controllers
out there so you got no other choice.
But the quality is there, the app is there.
Works with HomeKit, works with Lady A,
works with Google.
It is all there and I truly love them.
I'm definitely gonna be picking up some more.
If you guys wanna see a updated pros and cons list,
definitely check out the link down below.
I'll update my website if I have any issues or concerns.
Definitely check that link down below.
If you guys wanna see the next video in my HomeKit series,
click the card right there.
And if you're brand new here,
I hope you'll consider subscribing
for more smart home content right here on Modern Day Tech.
Thanks for watching.
♪ No, no, nothing can break me ♪