This is a fork of WiFiFanCon by @Hypfer . This project adds a compatible esphome config for the same hardware. As the original author does not want to have this in his repo, this fork remains standalone. I removed the PCB files and the tasmota config, visit the original repo mentioned above for those.
Control 12V PC Fans via Wi-Fi or Homeassistant with esphome
Hardware:
esphome-webgui (if enabled)
Homeassistant gui (with hidden entities enabled)
- Support of up to four 4-Pin PWM 12V PC Fans (This does only work for PWM, NOT work for DC-controlled FANs!)
- Individual RPM Monitoring for all 4 Fans
- Full control via a Webinterface
- Different Voltage extension headers to allow for customization with e.g. additional temperature probes or other sensors
- Very easy beginner-friendly THT soldering
- Fits snugly into an isolated 45ct junction box
Head over to the original repo at https://github.com/Hypfer/WiFiFanCon/pcb for the PCB.
fill in your secret-variables or use a secrets.yamland install the project's yaml via one of esphome's installation methods.
Have a look into esphome's extensive documentation if you never have used it before.
I do have quite a few heat-producing devices such as servers or Hi-Fi equipment which are trapped in whatever furniture from Ikea barely fit them. This achieves a clean look but also kills the hardware due to insufficient ventilation.
My first solution for this was to add a few very silent 12V Noctua NF-A14 PWM PC Fans and run them at 5V with 33% duty cycle using an Arduino nano. While that worked just fine, after a year, I've noticed quite a lot of dust buildup on the Fans as well as everything else.
Therefore, I was looking for a way to periodically run the Fans at full speed to blow away whatever dust buildup there might be. How else would you do that if not automated via Home Assistant?
As it turns out, the ESP32 offers everything required for such a project. It has Wi-Fi, it can do 25kHz PWM with more than 4 channels and it is also capable of monitoring the Fan speed. Furthermore, as it is available as a full devkit PCB, flashing, soldering and everything else is very easy.
Therefore, I basically just needed to design a PCB that features a DC Jack, some Fan Headers and connects everything in a neat package. Because it is only 70x70mm in size, it perfectly fits into these dirt-cheap german junction boxes, which you can get for 45 cents each.
While there are other projects on GitHub achieving similar things, they didn't really 100% fit my requirements, which are:
- Set Fanspeed to x%
- Don't care about temperature
- Show up in home assistant
- Be very easy to solder
The selection of Fans is absolutely key! Many PWM-PC-Fans do not actually stop at 0% PWM. Some do (like e.g. pretty much all Fans
from Noctua and from Iceberg-Thermal), but many doen't. Some Fans fall back to a "reasonable minimum" to provide at least some
airflow (like many Serverfans), which is mostly equivalent to 25-35% ofthe PWM range. Some act like 0% PWM is the minimal value on
which the FANs should run (like some FANs from `arctic' that i tested, even tough they claim to stop at 0% PWM!). And some (most
likely very old) PWM-FANs stop below a certain PWM-range and oscillate back and forth, because there is not enough oompf to kick
them up, and the motor is stalling the fan. The last example is very unhealthy for the fan. While there maybe a 5-15% range, where
it would be possible to kick up the Fan by first setting it to 100% and then to the desired level, you really should avoid this!
If your FANs refuse to stop, you can also tinker to make this work. The correct way to do this would be to cut off the supply voltage to the FANs, when set to 0%. This would require 4 additional I/O-Pins in the worst case, but the ESP32 used here has enough Pins, and you may have to hack this in and cut some traces, but it is however very doable.
You might have to test out for yourself what works best for you. If you don't care about Money, just go with Noctua. They are top-notch in every regard (except for their default color-scheme). However, I also quite like the Fans from Iceberg Thermal, because they offer black, grey, rgb and teal Fans and are reasonable cheap. However, if you need alot of FANs for your project, get one and test first.
This hardware is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
The software is licensed under the Apache-2.0 license.