MaxxFan

The MaxxFan device lets the panel work the roof fan the same way its handheld remote does — by flashing an infrared LED at it. It suits the MAXXAIR MaxxFan Deluxe and any MaxxFan whose remote controls speed, direction, the lid and a thermostat.

Unlike every other device on the panel, the MaxxFan is not paired over Bluetooth and has no MAC address. It needs a small piece of hardware wired to the panel: an infrared LED aimed at the fan's remote-control window.

What you need

• An infrared LED (940 nm, the wavelength every remote uses) with a current-limiting resistor, or a ready-made IR transmitter module.
• The LED wired to GPIO20 on the panel's JP1 header, with its other leg to GND. A transistor driver stage is worth adding if the fan is across the van: driven straight from the pin the range is short, roughly the length of an arm.
• Line of sight, or near enough, from the LED to the fan. Infrared bounces off white ceilings and walls surprisingly well, so it does not have to be aimed perfectly — but it cannot go around a corner.

Setting it up

1. Wire the IR LED to GPIO20 and GND before powering the panel up.
2. On the Devices page, Add device → MaxxFan (no MAC or key needed), then Restart to apply. There is nothing else to configure.
3. Two cards appear on the dashboard: MaxxFan · Fan and MaxxFan · Lid + Auto. Drag them wherever you want them.
4. Press Out on the Fan card. The fan should start and the lid open. If nothing happens, see Problems? below.

The Fan card

The MaxxFan · Fan card holds the fan itself:

• The big number is the speed, 10% to 100%. Under it is the direction — Intake, Exhaust, or Off.
• The ten-segment Speed bar sets the speed directly: tap the sixth segment for 60%. Tapping a segment while the fan is off also starts it.
• Off, In and Out are the power and direction buttons. In pulls air into the van, Out blows it out. Both start the fan; Off stops it.
• The − and + buttons step the speed by 10%.

Turning the fan on opens the lid, and turning it off closes it — the same coupling the handheld remote has. To run the fan with the lid shut (MAXXAIR calls this ceiling-fan mode) start the fan, then press Close on the MaxxFan · Lid + Auto card.

The Lid + Auto card

The MaxxFan · Lid + Auto card holds the roof lid and the thermostat:

• Open and Close work the lid motor. The lid can be opened without running the fan.
• Manual and Auto switch the thermostat on and off. In Auto the fan runs itself to hold the temperature; in Manual the speed you set is the speed it runs at.
• The big temperature is the thermostat setpoint. The fan stores this in whole degrees Fahrenheit and nothing else, so the card shows Celsius as the large number with the real Fahrenheit value underneath, and the − and + buttons step one degree Fahrenheit at a time — which is why the Celsius number moves in jumps of about 0.6°.
• The setpoint greys out in Manual, because the fan is not acting on it.
• The small circular arrow in the card's top right is Resend: it transmits the current settings to the fan again. See below for when you need it.

Why the cards can be wrong

The MaxxFan link is one-way. The panel can tell the fan what to do, but the fan never reports back — exactly like the handheld remote, which also has no idea what the fan is doing. So both MaxxFan cards show what the panel last transmitted, not what the fan is actually doing.

That matters in three situations:

• Somebody uses the handheld remote, or the buttons on the fan itself. The fan obeys them, and the panel's cards go stale without any sign of it.
• The fan was out of range or something blocked the LED when you pressed a button. The card updates; the fan does not.
• The panel rebooted. It remembers what it last sent and shows that, but deliberately does not re-transmit at startup — a power cut that restarted the panel did not necessarily restart the fan, and blasting a stale state at it on every boot would be worse than a stale card.

In all three cases the fix is the same: set the cards to what you actually want and press Resend on the MaxxFan · Lid + Auto card. That transmits everything — power, speed, direction, lid, mode and setpoint — in one go, and the fan and the panel agree again.

Home Assistant

The MaxxFan appears in Home Assistant as six controls: a Power switch, a Speed number, a Direction select, a Lid switch, a Mode select and an Auto Temperature number. The two buttons, Resend and the beep, are on the panel and the web UI only.

Everything said above about the cards being optimistic applies to Home Assistant too: these entities report what the panel last transmitted.

Problems?

• Nothing happens when you press a button → the IR LED is not reaching the fan. Check the wiring to GPIO20 first, then aim: hold a phone camera at the LED (most phone front cameras show infrared as a faint purple flicker) and press a button — if the LED is not flickering, it is the wiring, not the aim.
• The fan reacts sometimes, from some positions → the LED is under-driven. Add a transistor stage, or move the LED closer to the fan.
• The card and the fan disagree → somebody used the handheld remote. Press Resend, as described above.
• The cards never appeared after adding the device → the panel needs a restart after adding any device. See The Devices page.
• Two MaxxFan devices were added → only the first gets the IR LED; GPIO20 can only belong to one of them. Delete the extra one.