When you say adapters, can I ask what you’re talking about there? Maybe a picture if you have a moment. This is intriguing.
It sounds like either the power supply isn’t enough for the bulbs and the one that you’re putting in that’s not a smart bulb is pulling less straw which is giving more power to the smart bulbs from the company, but I’m just not sure or the second one I can think of showing this behavior is that The wiring is different than what is needed but it sounds like everything else is working in general so it can be that. But the behavior is similar to other wiring issues I’ve seen before.
We have some really smart people on a team around these parts I’m going to tag them in because there are some that know some things about electrical and they may have a better idea of this behavior than I would.
@Mavens any thoughts on this particular one? It’s a little bit of an older thread popping up
Here’s a picture of the ceiling fan as well as the bulbs and adapters.
One thing that might help explain it better… I did a lot of testing different combinations of how I powered them off and what was plugged in where. There are three sockets. At one point I had a Wyze bulb in one socket, and the other two were empty. The Wyze bulb would not turn on. I screwed in one regular bulb, and as soon as it made contact with the socket, both the Wyze bulb and the regular bulb turned on, and there was still an empty socket.
I just want to reiterate that the bulbs, sockets, and adapters were all tested and shown to be working by swapping them in and out of other known working devices (trying to apply some basic troubleshooting logic to find the cause)
My best guess is that unless there is a large enough load drawing current from the sockets, then the sockets will not supply power, and I’m guessing that a Wyze bulb in standby mode draws very very little current.
Thanks again for the fast reply and tagging others on this topic!!
Back when Wyze bulbs had a bug that renders them unusable when schedules cross over at midnight, I looked for a replacement from another brand. I found a suitable one. I have it on switch-controlled floor lamp. Of course people turn the switch off from time to time. But it it always comes back after turning the switch on, with all the settings intact even after it’s been off for a while.
I also have Wyze bulbs and they lose their settings if the switch is turned off.
none of my Wyze bulbs lose their settings when powered off and then on from the switch. I can even take them out of the socket and screw them in to a different socket and they keep their settings, so that is not the issue here
What smart features of the bulbs are you using? Is it just the smart on off or are you using the dimmer function at all ? I don’t know what else to try with the smart wyze bulbs in the fan, but if you’re looking for a simple smart on and off of the bulbs, another angle would be to install a wyze switch at the wall switch and then put the working regular light bulbs back in the fan. With that route you would get the on off with the app and voice control if you hook it up to a third party like Alexa. One thing you would lose though would be being able to dim the bulbs with the switch but if you don’t do that function then you’re not missing that.
Thanks for that idea! I’m planning on using the features where it slowly dims and warms in the evening, and slowly brightens in the morning to help with circadian rhythm, and may choose to swap them out for color bulbs later, so unfortunately the on/off only option won’t work for me.
The longest they were powered off was for 45 seconds.
The symptoms appeared immediately so I spent the entire time they were plugged in testing them and trying to get them to work. I never put them “into production” (as soon as I realized that they would not power back up, I took them out and put the regular bulbs back in so that the room could be lit)
I’ve kept the Wyze bulbs unplugged for weeks and never had a problem loosing settings. Lot of fans have lamp dimming circuits. The lights are not 100% ON but using only part of the sine wave power. That noise may interfere with bulb’s receiver.
By “lamp dimming circuits”, do you mean a rheostat? This does not have one of those. The regular light bulbs are either on or off.
And I think it’s worth mentioning again that the Wyze bulbs will turn on as long as one of the three sockets as a regular light bulb in it.
So if all three sockets are empty, I can put in one Wyze bulb, and it will not turn on.
As soon as I screw in a regular light bulb, the Wyze bulb will turn on.
I can then unscrew the regular light bulb, and the Wyze bulb will stay on.
Then I can place the other two Wyze bulbs in so that all three are Wyze bulbs and all three are on.
Then I can go into the Wyze app and turn those three bulbs off and they will turn off.
However, the app will not be able to turn them back on. Unscrewing a Wyze bulb and putting it back in will not turn it on (it does on all the other light fixtures) and turning off power to the fan and turning it back on does not turn the Wyze bulbs back on (it does on all the other light fixtures). The only way to get them to turn back on is to take one out and place a regular bulb in one of the three sockets.
first off thank you thank you thank you for the detailed run down of your trouble shooting. this helps us immensely! this sounds like a circuitry issue. The two things that are coming to mind is that either one the fan has some type of weird circuitry in it and has to have a certain load before it will send it to all of the sockets. Once it’s there it’ll stay. Explain somewhat of what you’re talking about with putting the regular bulb in and everything working from that point forward. Or secondly, there’s something in the socket adapters that is causing a change in draw or resistance. But that seems unlikely considering what they are. I can’t lie i’m a little perplexed on this one and I don’t like that I can’t test it on my own. Have you done any Google Foo to see if this type of fan has any similar issues with other bulbs? There are quite a few smart bulbs on the market now maybe it’s noted around numerous types of bulbs and then we can narrow it down to the fan being the issue.
I think this is at play. Sounds just like the behavior I’d say smart bulbs would exhibit when they are placed wherever, but on a fixture or a wall switch that has a dimmer and is not providing full power to the smart bulbs (like the wyze bulbs that don’t work well on switch or fixture dimmers, leave the dimming up to the app and give the ball full power).
Thank you everyone for replying with helpful info and suggestions!!
My next step is to test the adapters themselves. The problem is that I can’t seem to find any other outlets in my house that use the smaller style light socket. The reason I didn’t test them right off the bat is because the smart lights do turn on once one of the sockets has a regular bulb in it, so they are doing their job of conducting electricity and allowing a larger sized bulb into a smaller sized socket.
I have completely ruled out the possibility of any kind of dinner playing a role in this because there are no dimmers here. It’s a straight line from the breaker box to the ceiling unit. There is no dimmer functionality in the fan, only an RF remote that sets the fan speed and turns the lights on and off - cannot dim the lights. No dimmer. No rheostats.
The fan motor may have a potentiometer to control fan speed, and if that circuitry and/or motor is “leaky”, then I can see that playing a role, but, i repeated the tests with the fan off, set to low, medium, and high, and it had no impact. Again, it’s just the presence of one or more regular bulbs that allows them to power on.
I’m tending to agree that there has to be some goofy circuitry in the fan that isn’t letting any current through unless the pull is above a particular threshold - intentionally or not. Unfortunately I don’t know of a solution other than something constantly providing a high enough load. The problem with that is, even if I find something that ISN’T a light bulb so that the room can be dark when I want it dark, it’s still gonna be constantly pulling significant current - much more than what a Wyze bulb in standby mode would pull - which will impact my electric bill.
I don’t know enough about electrical equations and stuff to figure out exactly what the threshold is, or if there’s a way to change the threshold, or a way to bump up the load long enough for the lights to turn on
I owe you an apology! I finally found online a manual for the fan remote, and it turns out that the power button for the lights actually doubles as a dimmer switch! I apologize for dismissing your input without investigating it sooner!
It’s hard to tell how many steps there are from “off” through “bright”, but I can tell that the unit was at the second highest setting up until a little bit ago where I moved it to the most highest setting to repeat the testing.
After repeating the experiment with the dimmer set to it’s maximum brightness, I got the same results, with one exception: With the configuration of two Wyze bulbs, and one regular bulb, when using the Wyze app to dim either of the Wyze bulbs, the one regular bulb that’s in there begins to flicker. I’m not sure if this indicates a potentiometer, indicates a rheostat, or some other method of dimming…
I think my next step is to bypass the remote’s receiver for lighting. According to what I read, the fan, even though it comes with this remote kit as the only means of controlling the fan, is just using a universal remote kit that can be applied to almost any fan. As such, there are seperate terminal connections, so instead of wiring the lighting wires into the receiver, it should be possible to just connect them with wire nuts. This would result in power always being supplied to the sockets, which I’m okay with, since the lights themselves will be Wyze bulbs, and the on/off/dimming/colors will be controlled via the app.
I am capable of doing this work myself, but because my health is sub-par, and this will require me to be on a ladder two stories up (i am also dislike being on a ladder) I will probably hire an electrician.
It will either solve the problem or it won’t, and if it does not, then I’m sure the electrician will have other options (sell me a new fan and a separate lighting fixture probably)
no worries at all, you have been more than Thorough in every other detail of your troubleshooting and explanation of things for us to help out with. I just wish we could get that from every issue we encounter on these forums. You can’t be expected to catch every single thing. Especially with his sneaky as some of these companies are with putting things in too!
If you do hire an electrician, make sure to let him know what bulb base is you’re dealing with and he might be able to bring a tester to test resistance for those particular bases and you might be able to find a solution not so intensive. A lot of electricians have been around long enough and know a lot of tricks
