Alright, let me walk you through this little adventure I had, the one I’ve been calling ‘joe’s in the fan’. It wasn’t planned, not really, just one of those things that starts simple and then spirals.
So, I had this old desk fan. Good airflow, but dumb as a rock. On/Off, that’s it. I thought, hey, let’s make it a bit smarter. Temperature control, maybe remote access. Seemed easy enough. I grabbed one of those cheap ESP boards, you know the ones, flashed it with some basic firmware. Let’s call this little board ‘Joe’.
Getting Started
First step, hook Joe up. I needed a way for Joe to switch the fan’s power. Found a relay module in my parts bin. Wired Joe’s output pin to the relay trigger, and then carefully routed the fan’s mains power through the relay contacts. Safety first, right? Well, mostly. Double-checked the connections. Used jumper wires for testing initially.
Then I added a temperature sensor, a simple DHT11. Connected it to another pin on Joe. Wrote some quick code: read temp, if temp > threshold, turn relay on, else turn relay off. Uploaded it. Seemed to work fine on the bench. Joe turned the relay click-clack when I warmed the sensor with my fingers. Success? Not quite.
Where Things Got Messy
Now, the ‘in the fan’ part. I decided to mount Joe and the relay inside the fan’s base. It looked neater. Got everything tucked in there. Powered it up. The fan kicked on when the temp was high, kicked off when low. Perfect.
For about five minutes.
Then Joe started acting weird. It would randomly reset. Sometimes the fan would turn on/off rapidly. Sometimes Joe just froze. I figured it was the code. Spent hours tweaking timings, adding error checks. No dice. Still flaky.
Pulled Joe out of the fan base, put it back on the bench, connected to the fan with longer wires. Suddenly, rock solid again. Put it back in the base… problems returned. Lightbulb moment: electrical noise. The fan motor, spinning up right next to poor Joe, must have been throwing off all sorts of interference.
The Fix… Sort Of
Okay, so how to fix noise? Shielding? Better power filtering?
- Tried shielding: Wrapped Joe and the relay in electrical tape, then some aluminum foil. Made maybe a tiny difference, but still unreliable.
- Tried power: Swapped the cheap USB adapter powering Joe for a better quality one. Added a capacitor across Joe’s power pins. Helped a bit more, but still got random resets, especially when the fan motor first kicked on.
- Tried separation: Moved Joe physically further from the motor wiring inside the base. This had the biggest impact. Had to extend some wires, make it less neat.
It’s working now, mostly. But I wouldn’t trust it completely. Sometimes, on really hot days when the fan runs a lot, Joe still has a little hiccup. It’s like the fan motor just bullies it electronically. So ‘Joe’ is quite literally ‘in the fan’, dealing with its noisy environment.
End result? The fan is smarter, yes. But it took way more effort than expected, involved a lot of head-scratching, and the final setup inside the base looks a bit like spaghetti. It’s not the clean, elegant solution I pictured. Just another reminder that interfacing digital stuff with noisy AC appliances isn’t always plug-and-play. Sometimes you just gotta wrestle with it until it kinda works, and then hope for the best. That was my ‘joe’s in the fan’ saga.
