Hi all,
I wanted to share a project that I’ve been working on and off for the last 3 years. I finally have all the pieces together but I don’t know what direction I should go from here.
Ceiling Fan Control
The ceiling fans I have in my house came with a RF Remote Control so that you can adjust the fan speed/light from a remote. The remote looks like this:
You can buy a kit on Amazon for ~21$ (this is a universal kit that should work in all fans):
Using a Photon and a Transmitter chip I built a little package where I can control all my fans throughout my house. The entire package is 47$ Here it is:
So next up I built a small Web Application:
This app scales so I can use it on my Phone/Tablets as well.
I plan on integrating Nest support, adding Amazon Echo support (already working for me at the house),building in a Scheduling system and adding a User Access control.
Question
I think I have a cool little package that other people could find beneficial.
The question is, how should I proceed next? These are a few options what I was thinking:
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I could try to actually build a product and sell it. But this will cost lots of money/time upfront. Maybe put it on Kickstarter?
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Make a kit (Photon, Breadboard, Transmitter, wires) that people buy so they can assemble the hardware themselves. The service (web app) would then provision the Photon so it works with my service. To support the server costs I would have to charge a small yearly fee.
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Like #2, but make the Photon side of things completely open source. The user can then build their own software interface, or still use my service.
What are your guys thought on this? Is there any interest in something like this in the first place?
I know there are a few options on the market already, but they are very expensive from what I saw. With this solution, its fairly cheap to get your ceiling fans connected. 
Carsten