Tasmotized Sonoff IFan03 and HASS

06 Jul, 2020

Sonoff IFan03 is a cheap little device for controlling a ceiling fan that you can manage over WiFi or 433MHz radio. Thankfully, it's very easy to flash open source Tasmota on it.

The case is not glued together, easy to open and put back together by bending the sides.

The pins necessary for flashing are marked, you can solder 2.45mm header and leave it, the case closes just fine afterwards. When you're ready to flash hold down the large white button that you use for RF pairing while you boot up and release after 5 seconds.

It doesn't have a spare GPIO for sensor(s). In most cases it's not worth it, but you can use RX/TX as GPIO if you turn serial logging off completely.

I used ft232r USB to serial UART interface with Tasmotizer flashing tool for Tasmota. Below the wiring.

HASS

Tasmota already has a template for IFan03 and you can communicate with Home Assistant over MQTT. In your configuration.yaml file you need to setup a template something like this.

fan:
  - platform: mqtt
    name: "ifan03"
    state_topic: "ifan03-1/stat/RESULT"
    speed_state_topic: "ifan03-1/stat/RESULT"
    state_value_template: >
        {% if value_json.FanSpeed is defined -%}
          {% if value_json.FanSpeed == 0 -%}0{%- elif value_json.FanSpeed > 0 -%}1{%- endif %}
        {%- else -%}
          {% if states.fan.ifan03.state == 'off' -%}0{%- elif states.fan.ifan03.state == 'on' -%}1{%- endif %}
        {%- endif %}
    speed_value_template: "{{ value_json.FanSpeed }}"
    availability_topic: ifan03-1/tele/LWT
    payload_available: Online
    payload_not_available: Offline
    speed_command_topic: "ifan03-1/cmnd/FanSpeed"
    payload_low_speed: "1"
    payload_medium_speed: "2"
    payload_high_speed: "3"
    command_topic: "ifan03-1/cmnd/FanSpeed"
    payload_off: "0"
    payload_on: "1"
    qos: 1
    speeds:
      - low
      - medium
      - high
  - platform: mqtt
    name: "ifan03_light"
    state_topic: "ifan03-1/tele/STATE"
    value_template: "{{ value_json.POWER }}"
    command_topic: "ifan03-1/cmnd/POWER"
    availability_topic: "ifan03-1/tele/LWT"
    qos: 1
    payload_on: "ON"
    payload_off: "OFF"
    payload_available: "Online"
    payload_not_available: "Offline"

Make sure your MQTT topics correspond to your setup.

As of current version 0.112.3 Home Assistant's Lovelace UI doesn't really have a proper card to represent a fan control. The device is basically three switches (speeds), with default UI you can use horizontal stack card with three entity buttons inside.

cards:
  - entity: fan.ifan03
    name: Low
    show_icon: true
    show_name: true
    tap_action:
      action: call-service
      service: fan.set_speed
      service_data:
        entity_id: fan.ifan03
        speed: 1
    type: entity-button
  - entity: fan.ifan03
    name: Normal
    show_icon: true
    show_name: true
    tap_action:
      action: call-service
      service: fan.set_speed
      service_data:
        entity_id: fan.ifan03
        speed: 2
    type: entity-button
  - entity: fan.ifan03
    name: Fast
    show_icon: true
    show_name: true
    tap_action:
      action: call-service
      service: fan.set_speed
      service_data:
        entity_id: fan.ifan03
        speed: 3
    type: entity-button
  - entity: fan.ifan03
    icon: 'mdi:stop-circle-outline'
    name: 'Off'
    show_icon: true
    show_name: true
    tap_action:
      action: call-service
      service: fan.set_speed
      service_data:
        entity_id: fan.ifan03
        speed: 0
    type: entity-button
type: horizontal-stack

Which would correspond to something like this.

Or you can use a custom card I made for myself, downloadable from github.