I bought a smart ceiling fan with Alexa and now a ghost turns it on by itself

A couple of years ago, in anticipation of the hot summer in the province where we live, Seville, we decided to buy a ceiling fan for the living room. We knew its limitations, such as that on a 40 degree day with a lot of sun shining it won’t do much, but given the characteristics of the place where it was going to be installed, it seemed like a great option. Before, with standing fans we did very well to reduce the heat, but It was a bit uncomfortable to have to transport them and have cables in the way..

Being a ceiling fan for a living room, we had certain aesthetic requirements. There are efficient fans that do their job at a low price, but with very generic and plasticky designs. For a room where you don’t want too much design, they are fine. In our case, we opted for a modern wood aesthetic that more or less fit in. But things didn’t end there.

We needed a fan with relatively large blades, since the living room is 35 square metersand not all fans move air enough to be noticeable in such a large space. In fact, most do not. Along with aesthetics, size became the second variable to filter, because we also needed the lamp to be powerful, not for everyday use, but for Christmas events, etc.

Finally, There was an extra “need”: that it be controllable with AlexaThis point is important, but before continuing you should know that thanks to mobile phones that have infrared and devices like the Broadlink, fans that use infrared for remote control can also be controlled intelligently.

In our case, we don’t have Broadlink, because in the living room both the TV, sound bar, light bulbs and smart plugs are compatible with the Amazon assistant, so What we were looking for was something that would integrate into the Amazon ecosystem without having to add another control device..

Finally, the model that came closest to what we wanted for a relatively low price was the white Fungo WiFi at Leroy Merlin. Its installation was simple although somewhat laborious.already waiting for summer and already having other light bulbs, after testing it with the remote, its use and integration with Alexa were put on hold until the arrival of the heat.

With the heat came the problems

With the arrival of heat in our house, we had to take advantage and integrate the fan with Alexa, because Until then, we only used it with the wall switch.. When it came to connecting, the problems began. The first thing to know is that the Sulion app causes a lot of problems, making it impossible in my case to connect the fan to Alexa.

After several attempts, I managed to get the fan to appear in the app. However, Amazon did not allow me to activate the Alexa skill necessary for the assistant to give orders to the fan. At this point, this serious fact It meant being left with a malfunctioning fan.and that I could no longer return it because the purchase withdrawal period had passed. I could resort to the guarantee, but from what I have read on the Internet, there are users with the same problem, and no solution.

If you buy smart plugs, smart bulbs, etc., and their app doesn’t work, look into what big app it might be based on. Smart Life is cloned by many other apps.

However, this part of the story ended well. For some time now I have noticed that Apps like this one from Sulion are clones or based on the operation of large apps like Smart Lifebut I wouldn’t have thought of trying the fan with an app not authorized or recommended by the manufacturer. However, as a last resort, reading through the reviews of the Sulion Skill, one user commented that it worked well with Smart Life, so I linked the fan to Smart Life after having unlinked it from the Sulion app and… bingo.

I finally had a smart fan, controllable by Alexa, and with optimal performance. Or so I thought.

I have a smart fan that I don’t fully control.

The integration with Alexa is great, even though both the app and the Smart Life skill are not the ones recommended by the manufacturer.

The integration with Alexa went very well thanks to the Smart Life skill. Now, from the Alexa app I can control the color temperature of the LEDs, the intensity, and the power of the fan.from off to full power (0-6). By saying “turn on the light”, Alexa does it and it always works. The same with “set the fan to 6”. The light was especially important, because the switch in the living room is not very close to where we sit to eat, and you have to get up and turn around to turn it on (first world problems, we know).

Once the fan is set up, everything should be a piece of cake, but it isn’t. During these months, since we barely used the light and we didn’t use the fan, the switch that powers it was off. This means that no matter how hard you tried to turn on the light with the remote, you couldn’t, because the fan had no power. However, since we have it with Alexa, the idea is to always leave the switch pressed, so that it always has power and thus be able to turn it on and off with Alexa or the remote.

The big problem is that now that it is powered 24 hours a day, We have noticed that it turns on by itself without any stimulation from us.. Some days it turns on (the light) at three in the afternoon, other days during the early morning, etc. It has happened with the fan, but the problematic part is the LEDs, and there have been cases where it has been serious because the light can be bothersome.

A few days ago a friend stayed at my house, and slept on the couch. At that time, I didn’t remember to turn off the fan switch, and right away That night, at about 4 AM, the light turned on by itself and dazzled our guest.who didn’t know how to turn it off and had to search for the switch, completely awake, because there are too many lumens on your face in complete darkness.

When it turns on by itself, Alexa detects it as on, but does not detect what is turning it on. Since it has not been integrated into the ecosystem, nor connected to the power, during the time without heat, we cannot know exactly what the origin of the problem is, because we have only been suffering from it for a short time. We have contacted the manufacturer by email, but it refers us, like other users, to replace the receiver. It is something easy to do, but according to other users it does not solve anything.

How I deal with the zombie

The fan is not unusable, because most of the time neither the fan nor the light turn on by themselves, nor do we usually have people sleeping on the sofa, so the light being on would only be an energy problem, but not a comfort problem (or rather, a lack of it due to glare).

With this scenario in mind, we now do two things:

• When we leave home for a weekend or longer, we leave the switch off.. In this way, we completely eliminate the zombie impulse it has, and there is no unintended energy consumption by us. That would be about 35 watts from the fan at maximum power, coupled with 20 watts from the LED lamp, also at maximum power. 55 watts for a product that you are not using is a lot.

This is how I managed to get Smart Life to notify me every time the fan was turned on. This way I can make sure it doesn’t stay on for too many hours if it has turned on by itself.

This is how I managed to get Smart Life to notify me every time the fan was turned on. This way I can make sure it doesn’t stay on for too many hours if it has turned on by itself.

• Receive notifications on your mobile when the fan turns onIf we are at home, but in another room, or away from home, but close by, we leave the switch on, so that we can give Alexa commands about the fan, which will remain connected to WiFi. To find out that the light has turned on by itself, I have set up an automation whereby, every time the light turns on, my phone will notify me. I cannot ask the Smart Life app to distinguish between voluntary switching on and random zombie ones, but it is a light that we generally turn on so rarely that receiving notifications once every few days is not problematic.

Two years after the purchase, I end up using the handset more than Alexa due to these problems, which remain unresolved.

A previous version of this article was published in 2022.

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