The Mysterious Light

In our bedroom resides a ceiling fan that is a marvel of modern technology.  It has no switch nor pull cord to turn it on and off.  Rather, all functions are controlled through a remote, just like a TV.  This remote does all sort of nifty things such as turning on the light that is in the base of the fan.  That is, we turn on and off the light and use the remote to do so.

At least, that's what we thought until about a month ago when the Missus told me that she was finding that the light was turning itself on around 6:30 in the morning about 2-3 times a week.  Then it stopped.  Then it started doing it again.  But never on the weekend (thank goodness!).

So, I thought the remote's batteries were getting weak and causing the light to come on (why, who knows?) but no, even with a change of batteries the light still came on randomly during the week, now between 6:10 and 6:30 in the morning.

I finally broke down and called for help.  I spoke to the nice lady at the fan company who reminded me that the remote is, after all, a radio transmitter and the fan is, after all, a radio receiver.  Furthermore, due to the limited frequencies available to such devices it is conceivable that someone else's remote device is triggering our fan's light!

Since this just started in the last couple of months possibly our neighbor installed a similar fan in their house and when they roll out of bed around 6 to 6:30 in the morning and turn on their overhead light, it is turning on ours too!  Why, the nerve of them!

So what's the fix?  Change the frequency settings via the teeny, tiny DIP switches in our remote and fan.  No sweat for the remote because even with my weakening eyes I am able to see those teeny, tiny switches (all four of them) and turn one of them from 'up' to 'down' and presumably change the device frequency.  No problem.

The problem lay with the fan itself.  It is a low clearance model which means it is smack against the ceiling.  The teeny, tiny DIP switches are in a tiny opening that is on top of the fan housing with no way in God's green earth to actually see them!

The fan.  Isn't it lovely?

The solution?  Yankee ingenuity!  The tools?  One each aluminum stepladder (check).  One each stainless dental pick (check).  One each Samsung Galaxy 7 phone with camera (check).  Ok, ready to deploy.

the tiny port to access the teeny, tiny DIP switches.  Notice the ceiling?

Standing on the ladder with my head scraping the popcorn ceiling material off and onto my hair, I positioned the phone over the tiny port for the teeny, tiny DIP switches and used the view on the phone to probe with the dental pick.  Of course the image was reversed so I had to move opposite of what I was seeing on the screen.  Most of the time the image was out of focus but randomly and just for about 5 seconds it would solidify into perfect clarity at which time I carefully positioned the dental pick by a switch - any switch, it didn't matter dagnabbit, and tried to pull it to the down position.  Let me say it was harder than it sounds here, and I think it sounds hard here.

Ultimately I succeeded and after coordinating the remote to the same setting, everything worked!

The true test is if the light comes back on again.  If it does, I'm going next door and telling my neighbor it is his turn to change his DIP switches.  Good luck to him.