Cheap Chinese receivers on the other hand are built to a low price and quality – they are susceptible to damage, do not have over-voltage protection and are not robust and the components often degrade quickly meaning that they don’t last for very long. Taiwan is the World centre for electronic control design and renowned for their quality. Sometimes other equipment turning on and off on the same circuit or nearby in an apartment above or below can create such behaviour.Īll our ceiling fan receivers are designed and manufactured in Taiwan to withstand the regular spikes and surges that typically occur. They can and do burn out equipment and in the worst cases lead to fires. These spikes can be up to hundreds or even thousands of volts and are harmful because they cause the wires in your electronic equipment to overheat, degrade your equipment and lead to premature failure.
A sudden increase in voltage that lasts for 3 nanoseconds or more is called a voltage surge. A voltage spike is a sudden increase in voltage that lasts for less than 3 nanoseconds. These can be exacerbated when lightening is striking sub-stations. Second generation designs are far more robust and long-lasting.Īll mains power supplies suffer from power surges and voltage spikes from time-to-time. This means that they are more complex, expensive and initially were also very unreliable and especially vulnerable to voltage spikes – see below. However these are extremely reliable and very rarely blow or pack up.ĭC fans’ receivers on the other hand do not have any additional control components and will “drive” the motor directly with the output hence they are also called drivers. If after replacing this your fan still doesn’t work then the only other thing it can be is the motor. Replacement capacitors are sold individually or these days increasingly as an assembly known as the “wire harness”. Other Components in the Ceiling Fan Control SystemĪC fans also use a number of capacitors to start and control the speed of the fan so if you have a faulty fan just replacing the remote control pack may not restore it to working order.
#Ceiling fan control switch drivers#
DC controllers are also called drivers since they convert the mains AC voltage that is fed to the ceiling fan first into DC which is then subject to the desired control and then back into AC again to power the fan motor. The DC controls typically have 6 speeds since DC voltage is easier to control evenly whereas AC is always 3 speed.
It is important to note that the controllers for AC and DC types of ceiling fan are entirely different and cannot be used for each other. During this time it automatically cycles through thousands of alternatives until it finds one that is not being used. For DC fan remotes they are set by pressing the “set” button continuously until 2 beeps are heard. If you purchase a replacement handset then the dip switch set on it MUST match the setting on the receiver otherwise it will not work. AC controls are much older than the newer DC ones and typically have dip switches to change the channel – see pic. In order to work these must be matched or “paired” with each other. To provide users control of a ceiling fan requires 2 components in the pack to be present: 1) the handset or transmitter and the 2) receiver which sits in the canopy next to the ceiling. DC remotes automatically by cycling through thousands of alternatives until it finds one that is not being used. Since other domestic appliances and entertainment systems often use the same RF frequency all our remotes have multiple channels that can be set if needed. These are all high quality reliable controllers that work with batteries and on either infra-red (IR) which require a line of sight or radio-frequency (RF) usually on 433MHz frequency although the Zephyr fan control is on 3G frequency. We stock controls manufactured by Hunter, Lucci, Matthews, MrKen, Casa and ourselves. Most people prefer to use a remote rather than a wall control although we do stock those as well. We stock a wide range of top quality remote controls including universal remote controllers that will work with any fan and not just the ones that we sell. Now apart from the bottom-end cheapest fans most people prefer to use a dedicated remote or wall control. That is cheap and cheerful and does the job but times have moved on. In days gone by ceiling fans were simply controlled by an on/off switch at the wall and/or by a simple pull-chain which also controlled the speed.