I’ve been searching and searching forever without luck, so now my future smart-blind-setup rests in the hands of the Homey community
Question: How do I make my blinds smart?
I’m looking for a little inspiration/help to making my existing roller blinds smart.
What are my requirements?
It has to be as cheap as possible
It has to fit the 25mm inner tube diameter of the existing blinds
It has to be a battery driven tubular motor for my blinds. So no 220V plug! (eg. ![image|674x500]
(upload://thDatKIMa5u4VWAfbMlOrZsWvMK.jpeg) )
It has to be easily integrateable into Homey
It has to be able to be sent to Denmark
What are the current solutions
I know that Soma is supported but I’d prefer not to have a solution where there’s an external motor that has to be fitted. This also excludes a lot of the cheap chinese external modules
Ikea has their motorized shades but unfortunately they ar not wide enough to fit the windows.
Jysk recently launched their electrical blinds, but they are also too narrow for my windows (200cm wide).
What have i found so far?
I’ve searched the forum over and over without luck, and most of the topics around this are either very old or without answers
I looked at Robb Smarrt where they had some tube motors, but they are now out of stock?
… and if you follow the instructions of how to request a new device, chances of getting it supported are high. Maybe it is the same as the ‘a curtain motor’ on the list.
To find out, you’ll have to pair your motor as common zigbee device, and Interview it @ the zigbee section of developer.athom.com.
Hi Peter,
Thanks a million for you input. I actually saw the app beforehand during my research and have followed the development and addition of all the devices for the past couple of weeks. Kudos to the developer - what an amazing job!
The only thing holding me back is that I’m reliant on a developer to develop the integration, and I’m not sure how this will work eg. will I be able to see the status (current height) og the shades etc.
Also will this work locally and most importantly be stable? My wife will decapitate me, if it isn’t reliable
It might be the only solution so if nothing else shows up, so I might be have to rely on this.
Thanks again
[APP] Motion Blinds have tubular motors to integrate in 25mm tubes of just about any roller blind, feature bi-directional communication (locally but requiring a small usb hub), are rechargeable and supported in Homey (shameless plug by the app developer ) They proved very reliable to me.
The Motion products are also sold internationally by other vendors, but I do not know if they are sold in Denmark. They sell their parts to other manufacturers so they just might be sold under different brand names, but they all rely on the Motion Blinds app and have quite recognizable remotes. I recently spoke to some one who might know resellers, so I’ll ask around.
@Edwin_D I have also looked into these for a while now. They have been in and out of stock on robbshop.nl, so I was confused whether or not they we’re still sold. (Otherwise the website is just a horrible experience :D)
The documentation isn’t all that well either, so I was kinda afraid to order them for that reason alone. I can’t seem to find any tutorial on setting up the USB dongle.
Nevertheless, I have actually just ordered them on robbshop.nl.
This seems to be the easiest workaround in my situation, given they supply some installation manuals
They’re definitely not cheap, when buying both 1 blind, remote and USB dongle 184 euro.
Installation is a breeze, if you run in to any trouble (but I don’t think you will) don’t hesitate to contact me. I started out with three blinds, currently I have eight of them and may still add more… At least the cost of the bridge is split in eight now too Using Homey you can also use other smart buttons if you have any of those, so you can do without the remote. In some rooms I use extra scenes on light buttons.
Right you are with splitting the cost of the bridge
I tried to buy them, but the check-out flow is horrible. I cannot proceed to check-out as nothing happens when i push the button
WAF table (based on my estimation, don’t dare to ask) on scale 1-10
Somfy RTS: 7 (sometimes a blind misses a command)
Motion: 9 (4 if I myself am unresponsive during programming the app)
KAKU: 2 (only slightly better than no Homey at all)
Fibaro: 8 (glad I replaced KAKU, but expensive)
Aotec wallmote: 5 (beautiful but you sometimes need to tap twice)
Heat-it push: 6 (ugly but work well once you get used to them)
Google Nest Hub: 6 (why won’t it recognise all of the 15+ ways you can yell a command?)
Homey in repair: 1 (Half the stuff isn’t working - what the #*&# is going on!)
Thanks for sharing
I actually drove to Germany yesterday (1 hour drive - no biggie) to pick up the Motion blinds.
I bought 4 motors + 1 hub + 1 remote.
So I’ll try that out for now
Ps. The Brel hub looks exactly like the one from Motion Blinds (Coulisse)
So far the Motion Blinds fit exactly to the blinds I already have. Setting it up was super fast and easy.
Final thing to do is integrating them to Homey, which gave me some trouble yesterday, but I’m in touch with the developer @Edwin_D who’s doing an amazing job supporting the app
I’ll give an update once the final setup is complete
Thanks for all your help everyone - you are life (or maybe wife?!) savers!
