This is an easy case for home automation. I use voice control for my fan (though it is the older style type, I have a Caseta fan control switch).

I used to be annoyed with fan remotes, until I found an SDR tool for the Raspberry Pi that let me clone the remote and control the fan with a cron job.

Also, on open-loop remotes you absolutely have to have separate on and off buttons, otherwise you end up accidentally hitting the button an extra time and getting out of phase with its power state, turning it on and off multiple times, until you realize what happened, then waiting for it to settle into a state, then possibly hitting the button one more time.

I have to agree; the designs of the remotes are atrocious. The designers should have prioritized the “can’t see the remote at 4AM” problem over the dozens of features I’ll never use.

My fan remote has 9 buttons, 2 of which are for the light. I really only ever hit two buttons ("1", the lowest speed, which also turns it on if it's off, and the power button). Pretty easy to figure out in the dark. I guess I'm a little surprised that something like this could cause such anguish.

Fan/AC remotes have some of the worst, most unexpected UX I've ever seen. I still remember an AC remote at an Airbnb I stayed at a few years ago that, instead of having temperature control buttons that said "up"/"down" or "hotter"/"colder", it had two buttons that said "too hot" and "too cold". The "too hot" button decreased the temperature setting on the thermostat and the "too cold" button increased it.

This labeling makes some sense if you stop to think about it, but I can't shake the thought that this was the first time I encountered an interface that asked me to describe how I was currently feeling, rather than me telling it what I wanted it to do.

The sentiment resonates with me, but I don't agree with the suggestion to combine the ON and OFF buttons into a single power button. Given you are stuck with a remote, there is 1) a decent chance your button press won't register, 2) no way of definitively knowing the current power state, as you would with a switch. Being able to spam the button for your desired power state, when it is unclear whether the fan is spinning up/down or not, is good UX when a control with better UX isn't available.

I agree that there are some super legit grumbles about the interface, about the UX here. There is deserved off-gassing. And the lack of simple standard convention sucks.

Both the worst part of this & what makes it hard for me to really accept is how circumstantial it is. It's just some bad fan, someone over sensitive or not quite jiving with their thing. It could be any of a million other ways, nothing is inherent. But these two have been thrown together and probably neither had much say in it, and the hard inflexibility of the circumstances sucks.

There's maybe possibly infrared / IR here? One could do their own remote? Maybe Matter will give us a world where we have agency & optionality for how we control our devices maybe possibly? The core tech here is better, much better, but what works for any given person is so… personal. And this person feels trapped, maybe really is. But the cost to add options is, materially, very very very little. Alas that optionality will itself often be unpleasant for many. Around and around the difficulties revolve.

Advice to the author: attach the remote to the wall. Some remotes come with its own bracket, but if not then some double-sided tape would work. Author liked old fixed regulator, so they should be fine with new one being fixed too.

This would completely eliminate half of the problems - no more lost remotes, no more lost batteries. This will also go a great way towards "access in the dark" thing as author will start to develop muscle memory on where "1" button is.

For more "advanced" things, get a universal fan control. Those often have more distinctive buttons, and if you can find the one with plastic buttons (not rubber ones), then you can melt some of them for this super distinct feel in the dark.

In other words, don't just be angry, do something to fix. It's pretty easy in this case.

One benefit of the separate on/off controls is that you can press off 10 times in a row, in case the first 9 times the signal encounters interference, without concern that subsequent presses turn it back on. With a fan, this is more troublesome than a light because you can't look at a fan that's spinning and quickly determine if it's slowing down.

You can't use smarter radios that confirm receipt because there could be another control that changed the mode.

I much prefer "move to this mode" instead of "toggle modes". It's way more predictable and I can be much more lazy.

I don't think its a limitation of the technology that makes it require a remote. It's that the fan that was purchased didn't feature a wall controller, however many do have them.

Or why don't you just attach the remote to the wall.

Fans for HVAC often come in a voltage or current controlled mode which can be wired up to a knob. Much nicer to deal with than these remotes.

UX/UI is steadily going downhill on everything where it was "re-designed". I feel new generation wants to re-imagine everything, at a cost of usability.

Author's submission, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44131537