You can, I have, it works… good enough. It’s not supposed to work in that mode, with chopped up sine waves, but it’s not such a big deal if you keep the motor cool, and it will stay cool because it’s a fan, a table fan… just mounted on a wall… and the motor is practically exposed, so it will be directly cooled.
Could you share the links of those cheap ones? Are those IR/RF controlled? Cuz I know about these, but they don’t have remotes.
EDIT: This is what I had in mind, but this is for LED lighting…
Yeah, I ran into those as well, but those are for fans with separate windings for different speeds, 1, 2, 3 or low, mid, high. You can’t use them for controlling a fan with one winding.