Minuet is a quality of life upgrade for your MAXXAIR Maxxfan. It replaces the original brushed motor and circuit board with a quieter brushless motor, a smart fan controller, and a range of thoughtful accessories to make your adventures on the road more comfortable.

While you’re upgrading your fan, you have a chance to add other great accessories. An environmental sensor package measures CO2, temperature, humidity and barometric pressure so the fan can start automatically when it gets stuffy inside. An LED light ring brings warm white and colorful lights to your ventilation system. Finally, the smart magnetic cover sensor turns the fan off when you snap your optional cover into place to keep the cold weather out and reduce noise when on the road. Minuet lets you take control of your Maxxfan like never before, and because it’s open and documented, it is ready for your custom add-ons and modifications.

We created Minuet to fix our campervan’s squeaky Maxxfan and give it new superpowers for travel and we’d like to help you upgrade yours too!

A Better, Smarter Fan

Minuet’s custom brushless fan motor is quiet, energy efficient, powerful, and reliable. It has extra wide front bearings to stabilize the shaft and no consumable parts, unlike the stock Maxxfan motor. Minuet’s upgraded controller drives the new fan motor with sensorless field-oriented control for smooth operation and low noise at all speeds from the barest breeze to a strong wind. A good fan should be felt; not heard. Install your new fan motor with common hand tools and enjoy the silence!

Minuet’s improved automatic thermostat optimizes your comfort, and optionally connects your fan to your local Home Assistant system to let you control your whole camping setup. Use preset modes, like quiet mode or set custom parameters that let your fan dynamically react to changing environmental conditions. And, it’s just as easy to override and take manual control if the steaks make your camper’s kitchen a little too smoky.

Minuet is compatible with your original Maxxfan infrared remote control and wired wall controls so you can keep them as before. Minuet aims to be discreet so it only provides audible feedback when it needs to tell you something important that you can’t observe directly from your actions. No more useless beeping!

Features and Specifications

The Minuet upgrade kit includes the main circuit board, motor, cables, adapters, and instructions needed for installation.

• Fan motor: 50 W brushless DC motor, attaches to the stock Maxxfan fan blade
• Fan motor driver: Texas Instruments MCF8316D sensorless field-oriented control motor driver optimized for acoustic performance
• Lid motor driver: Texas Instruments DRV8876 brushed motor driver
• Microcontroller: Espressif ESP32-C3 with 4 MB flash
• Connectivity:
  • Wi-Fi: 2.4 GHz 802.11b/g/n with WPA3 security
  • Bluetooth: 2.4 GHz Bluetooth LE
  • Infrared receiver: Compatible with the Maxxfan infrared remote control (not included), 38 kHz carrier frequency
  • RJ11/6P6C port: Compatible with the Maxxfan 4-button wired remote control (not included)
  • RJ45/8P8C port: Compatible with the Maxxfan 6-button wired remote control (not included)
  • RAIN port: Compatible with the Maxxfan conductive rain sensor in certain models (not included)
  • Expansion port: GPIO header for accessories, used by the Minuet light accessory
  • I2C port: QWIIC compatible I2C port for accessories, used by the environmental sensor accessory
  • LOCK port: Connect a switch to activate the safety lock function, used by the cover sensor accessory
  • USB port: Used to program and debug the firmware
  • RESET and BOOT buttons: Used to reset the microcontroller and enter the system bootloader
• Environmental protection: Conformal coating applied to the circuit board to protect it from condensation
• Firmware: Open source configuration based on ESPHome

Note: All specifications are preliminary and may change during development.

Light Accessory

• LED strip: 12 V SK6812 RGB/WW (color and warm white) individually addressable LED strip with self-adhesive backing and pre-installed connector
• Remote control: 24 key RGBW infrared remote control to control the light brightness, color, and special effects including a rainbow mode
• Hacker friendly: Build your own circuits with the provided GPIO breakout and prototyping area on the circuit board or connect your own SK6812/WS2812B compatible LED strip (not included) to illuminate a larger area of the ceiling nearby

Environmental Sensor Accessory

• Sensors: CO₂, temperature, humidity, and barometric pressure
• Hacker friendly: Plug in additional sensors to the QWIIC compatible I2C port or reuse the sensor for other projects

Smart Cover Sensor Accessory

• Cover sensor: Reed switch with a long cable and connector, automatically turns fan off when cover is attached. Compatible with insulated covers from Van Made Gear or Van Life Outfitters (not included)
• Hacker friendly: Connect additional switches (not included) in parallel with the cover sensor to activate the safety lock in other ways

Open Source

We’re committed to open source. You are welcome to modify the Minuet firmware and hardware subject to the license terms and we encourage you to make your own accessories. We want our users to feel empowered to take control of their appliances. Additionally, we welcome thoughtful contributions from the open hardware community.

The Minuet software, documentation, design, and all copyright protected artifacts are released under the terms of the MIT license. The Minuet hardware is released under the terms of the CERN-OHL-W license.

Please refer to the Minuet main repository on GitHub for details.

Interested in This Project?

You can sign up at the top of this page to be notified when the campaign launches and to receive other updates. We only send out relevant content, and you can unsubscribe at any time.