Review on 🌬️ Hon Guan Extractor Inline Temperature: Ultimate Efficiency for Air Ventilation Systems by Vincent Burton

I was hoping this would be a one stop solution for ventilation in my greenhouse, but unfortunately there are a couple of major downsides. First of all, it is a set of two very different products. The fan itself is great. I have no problem with that. This is a durable non-metal axial fan that isn't too noisy and can use a little back pressure. For a fan in a humid environment this is exactly what I'm looking for and I would probably give it 4-5 stars if I checked it myself. Unfortunately, however, the controller is terrible. First the surface mount connector broke when I took it out of the box. It's just bad design. The board has through holes for a connector which would be much stronger but the manufacturer decided to take the easier route and surface solder it. Luckily I had the right soldering tools on hand to fix it, although I had to figure out where the ground and where the power wire is as they aren't marked on the board and the wires aren't color coded. Turns out they stripped the ground wire farther than the power wire and the ground wire exited to the right, so hopefully that's at least consistent. When I disassembled the device for repairs, I noticed that the temperature sensor is just a cheap thermocouple, so not very accurate. It's located just below one of the slits on the back. After that I got it up and running with no problems, although I then realized that the manual didn't match the device. I was able to decipher the very poorly written instructions for setting the time, changing the temperature display from C to F, and setting the temperature calibration offset, but after that I had no idea what this controller was supposed to do. There are four modes that aren't even mentioned in the manual, but they're just labeled '00', '01', '02' and '03'. When you select some of these modes, symbols appear on the display that are not even mentioned in the manual. I couldn't understand them and couldn't find a way to set the desired temperature anywhere. Also, there's a significant response lag when changing the fan speed, and when you do that it first turns off the fan and then restarts. it's new speed. This is only odd considering that the fan is waiting for a PWM input that is supposed to provide a continuous change. By weird I mean bad firmware programming. I would advise you to just take a fan and power your own Arduino based controller; You could probably do it for under $20 and get exactly what you want. I made a simple thermostat this way using a nano, a higher quality but still cheap temperature sensor, and a small multicolor OLED display, and it worked flawlessly. If you are interested, you can find instructions online!