[APP][Pro] Powerview- Luxaflex & Hunter Douglas

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@Mike_Bouwman Make sure to update the ip of your PowerView hub in homey
You can do that in the device settings

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@martijnpoppen if I try that, I get a warning of a timeout of 10000 ms. I can’t save the changed setting. But in the Powerview app I have selected the option static ip-adress. Should I undo that?

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@Mike_Bouwman please send a new report after trying to save the settings

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@Mike_Bouwman i guess you send a new report?

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@martijnpoppen I just did

ca49a9ff-b76c-4be3-974f-d3e1cdfde3e5

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@Mike_Bouwman The report looks good. Also it looks like it has connection to the hub

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@martijnpoppen That doesn’t explain why the scenes are not loaded into the homey app. He still can’t find the scenes I programmed in the Powerview app. Does it matter that homey is connected by LAN and the gateway is connected by wifi?

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@Mike_Bouwman i can only tell you what I see in the logs right If there’s no error in the log.

Yes that might be a issue if homey is not able to reach PowerView. Most of the time this is a local network issue which I can’t do anything about

So you can check if the ip range of your homey is the same as your PowerView
If it isn’t then that’s the issue

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@martijnpoppen what do you mean by IP-range? The first en second 3 digits are the same. The third isn’t. The IP-adres of the gateway has 2 digits in de third row and the IP-adres of my Homey has 1 digit.

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@Mike_Bouwman The IP range refers to the first three sets of numbers in an IP address (e.g., http://192.168.1.xxx/). If the first three sets of numbers are different between your Homey and PowerView hub, they’re on different networks, and they won’t communicate properly.
Since the third set of numbers is different in your case, Homey and the PowerView hub are likely on different subnets, which could be causing the issue. You’ll need to make sure both devices are on the same subnet for them to talk to each other.

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@martijnpoppen I have a deco mesh system, but my Homey was connected directly tot the router. Now I’ve connected the Lan cable to the deco and now they’re on the same network and it works! I can find the scenes. Thank you for the help and patience! :pray::smiling_face:

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@Mike_Bouwman nice good to hear!
This will hopefully also help for other local apps :slight_smile:

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Hi @martijnpoppen,

I have purchased a Homey Pro about a month ago and have been playing around with it. We live in an apartment with 4+3+2 horizontal blinds (in 3 rooms) and 2 TDBU duette shades (in 1 room), 1 main hub (wireless), 1 sub hub (wired) and 2 repeaters (due to the poor range of the hubs), all gen 2. We also have various Google speakers in the house.

I installed your Homey Powerview app and love the individual device control using Google Assistant voice commands (the Android Powerview app only supports that for scenes that you create manually). And I often use the room name or part of a device name to control multiple devices, e.g. “woonkamer omlaag” will close all 4 blinds in the “woonkamer” room and “buiten omhoog” will open the leftmost and rightmost blind (which are named “Buiten links” and “Buiten rechts”). I also just found out that I can say “Luxaflex” to control all coverings in the room where I give the voice command.

I have a few questions, suggestions and remarks about your Homey Powerview app (v2.8.2):

  1. Adding devices: on mobile devices, the text on tiles is truncated causing the same text for adding hubs and coverings → can you maybe remove obvious “Powerview (r)” part?
  2. Adding hubs:
    a) I expected the coverings to be added too, but that didn’t happen → can you please explain what the function of adding the hub is?
    b) Add hub gen 1/2 multiple times creates multiple duplicate devices → can you please check if the device is already added?
    c) Add hub gen 3 (which I don’t have) creates device without an IP address → can you please check if device really exists?
    d) What does “Update coverings” on a hub do? Update IP address on all coverings? → can you please explain this in the app?
  3. Adding window coverings:
    a) The edit field for the IP address is not really visible → can you please add borders to the edit field and maybe a different background color?
    b) Why do I have to enter the IP address? → Is it not possible to use the hub’s IP address?
    c) To avoid IP address changes, I have reserved it in DHCP in the router → can you maybe add a note in the app?
  4. Advanced settings for window coverings:
    a) It is not obvious how all advanced settings work exactly (e.g. Vane Tilt, Separate control) → can you please suggest how to set the options for the various coverings (e.g. horizontal blinds, vertical blinds, TDBU shades)?
    b) The option “Separate control = No” often does not work: “close > tilt 50% > open” on 2 horizontal blinds with exactly the same settings causes one to close correctly, but the other one to close and then lower a little probably due to the tilt, without tilt it works correctly → can you please fix this?
    c) changing advanced settings without saving does not give a warning (I forgot it a few times and was puzzled) → can you please prompt for confirmation when exiting without saving?
  5. Google voice commands: I had great difficulties finding the correct (Dutch) commands to control the coverings:
    a) full open/close: “ABC omhoog/omlaag” and “open/sluit ABC” both work for the horizontal blinds and for the bottom of the TDBU shades;
    b) relative open/close: “ABC x% omhoog/omlaag” and “open/sluit ABC x%” both work for the horizontal blinds and for the bottom of the TDBU shades;
    c) absolute open/close: “ABC op x%” and “open/sluit ABC tot x%” both work for the horizontal blinds and for the bottom of the TDBU shades;
    d) partial tilt: “ABC kantelen/draaien” and “kantel/draai ABC” both usually tilt the horizontal blinds by 15-20% (but are sometimes not understood by Google) → but do you know the command to tilt back?
    e) relative tilt: “ABC x% kantelen/draaien” and “kantel/draai ABC x%” both work for the horizontal blinds → but do you know the command to tilt x% back?
    f) tilt till x% (absolute): “ABC tot x% kantelen/draaien” and “kantel/draai ABC tot x%” do NOT work for the horizontal blinds → do you know the correct command?
    g) how to control the top of the TDBU shades → do you know the commands to lower/raise the top (full, relative and absolute)?
  6. Scenes and Scene collections:
    a) At first, I couldn’t find them in the “Then” cards, but finally found them under the hub device;
    b) What are scene collections and where can I create them (couldn’t find them in the Android Powerview app)?

Quite a post in total, but also a big praise on how you got it all to work. Thanks!

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Hey @ArnoudK

Thanks for your praise! And glad you like the individual commands via a smart speaker. I have the same thing with Google home and it really adds value.

I’ll try to answer every question, sorry if i miss something :wink:

Unfortunately I can’t this is decided by Hunter Douglas (as this is a official branded app) and is their defined driver name. As a possible solution i’ll ask to Athom if they can provide a row design or bigger cards

  • 2a The hub controls the scenes. And this is actually a bit of legacy. In the past this app only had a hub and later i added the individual window coverings as a option. The scenes still go trough the hib
  • 2b unfortunately there’s no identifier for this hub to check on. I search for multiple solutions but unfortunetaly this is it
  • 2c Not sure why you want to add a Gen 3 hub if you don’t have it. Same answer as 2b
  • 2d yes it updates all the ip addresses of the coverings. → I can add a info icon to that setting
  • 3a. yes I still need to update the pairing view to the new Homey UI.
  • 3b. not sure what you mean by this. But basically if the hub can’t be found in your network you have to manually enter the ip
  • 3c. Not sure where you would like to see that? as a info icon aswell?
  • 4a these settings depends on your own window covering, there’s no specific way. For example in a TBDU you can completely reverse the control by these settings.
  • 4b I need a diagnostic report for that so i can see what you did, right now i can’t tell if it’s wrong or not. but most of the time it’s advised to add a delay. The powerview hub cannot handle too many commands after each other. which probably didn’t save the updated state yet causing it to fail
  • 4c this is out of my control. You should request that at Athom
    1. In almost all of the cases you can use Open/Sluit - Draai 50% and reverting a x% is most of the time Sluit. All the other cases i’m not sure. But the TBDU is Open/Sluit and the top part is draai as that’s how it’s setup in Homey
  • 6a. Yes already answered that in a earlier reply
  • 6b. Only for Gen1 as far as i know
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Thanks for the quick response. My reaction on the open items:

2a-c) Because the windows coverings were not added when adding the hub, my sub hub was not found and I didn’t see the “IP address” field, I tried a couple of things, a.o. adding the gen 1/2 hub again and even a gen 3 hub :wink:

3a) can you maybe also make the IP address required as you can now continue without entering a value and it finds nothing (in my case). Or should it?

3b) the main hub IS found automatically, but when adding window coverings, I have to enter the IP address of the hub manually, otherwise no devices are found. Can’t you use the IP address of the hub (already retrieved) when adding window coverings?

4b) The problem also (often) occurs when opening a single horizontal blind (with a voice command or the position 1 top icon in the app), but (so far) never when setting position 1 and 2 to 100% in a flow (set pos1=80 & pos2=50, wait 15s and set pos1=100 & pos2=100). So it looks like the “separate control” option does not always work. I can usually reproduce it, so let me know what tests you want me to do and if you want me to create a diagnostics report.

5a-f) I have not got the “rotate back” command working yet. Since these voice commands may require more user interaction, would you mind/like if I created a new thread to list all the possible voice commands? Then you can link to it in your FAQ.

I hope you can solve issue 1 (text on tile), 2d (info icon “Update coverings”), 3a (new Homey UI) and 4b (separate control) in the app and maybe include 2a (hub function), 3c (reserve IP address) and 4a (advanced settings per window covering type) in the FAQ or setup instructions in this thread.

Thanks!

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2 That’s not how it works. In homey a device is NOT added automatically

3a will check

3b no that’s not possible. How should the app know which hub you want to connect to?

4b as said make sure to have some delays between commands. That’s most of the time the issue

5 sure! Might be helpful for other window covering apps as well

I won’t fix issue 1 as mentioned :wink:

The others I’ll look at

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Thanks.

I understand there is some history/legacy here, but it would be great if you could do it the same way as for e.g. Philips Hue (this is just for you to decide if this is possible/preferable):

  1. select which window covering to add (gen 1/2 or 3);
  2. search for the hubs and allow the user to select the hub;
  3. show the window coverings on that hub IP address and allow the user to (de)select them.

As for the “separate control” option, I myself cannot add any delay, because I only give one command (e.g. “Open Outer Left”) and the “separate control=no” option should set position 2 to 100% too (if I understand this option correctly). As I mentioned, this works in a flow (set pos1=100 & pos2=100), so it must be in the “separate control” option functionality. Again, let me know if you need a diagnosis report.

I will add a thread for voice commands, but it seems there are many options and not all of them work.

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@ArnoudK As said i’ll check the possibilities and come back to you on all points. For now it’s hard to say what’s happening on your side without me checking all the points first.

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@ArnoudK I checked for the separate control option

If enabled:
When closing Position 1, then Position 2 will always go back to the state it was set to.

if Disabled:
close/open both motors when Position 1 open/closes.

But that last option is depended on your type of window covering. I can;t control motor 2. in that case.

So what happens in the driver;
When enabled: I force the window covering to retrieve the last state from the seocnd motor and set that again
When disabled: I only set the first motor position and let motor 2 do it’s default thing (that’s out of my control)

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Thanks for clarifying to way the “separate control” option should work. Unfortunately, it looks like it does not work correctly (at least for horizontal blinds), because if I set it to “yes” for “Werkkamer Links” and to “no” for “Werkkamer Rechts”, with pos1 and pos2 all on 100%:

  1. Saying “Ok Google, Close Werkkamer to 80%” will first rotate both to 0% (standard behavior, also with the remote control), move both down to 80% and then rotate both back to 100% (which it shouldn’t for “Werkkamer Rechts”). In the Homey app, pos2 for “Werkkamer Links” is on 100% (correct), but pos2 for “Werkkamer Links” is on 0% (so the logical state 0% is correct, but the physical state 100% is not);
  2. Saying “Ok Google, Rotate Werkkamer 50%” will rotate “Werkkamer Rechts” to 50% (also in the Homey app), but “Werkkamer Links” will not move (as it is already on 100%);
  3. Moving pos2 of “Werkkamer Links” manually in the Homey app to about 50% (using the slider) will rotate “Werkkamer Links” to about 50%;
  4. Saying “Ok Google, Open Werkkamer” will move both up, but when fully closed, they lower a little and pos2 of “Werkkamer Links” is again on about 50% (correct) but pos2 of “Werkkamer Rechts” is on 0% (should be 100%). When I use the remote control, the blinds are closed correctly (and stay closed).

This also happens with “Werkkamer Rechts” if I give the voice commands only for “Werkkamer Rechts” (and not for the whole room). So it seems, an extra command IS given after closing and opening to rotate “Werkkamer Rechts” physically, which shouldn’t happen as “separate control” is set to “no”. And after opening, pos2 should be on 100% instead of 0%. I hope you can fix this, because the wife really hates the blinds not being folded up totally (and me too) :wink:

By the way, I have created a thread for the voice commands. Can you please mention it in your FAQ? Google Assistant voice commands for window coverings

Rotating the horizontal blinds to a specific position or in the other direction and controlling the top bar of the TopDown-BottomUp shades still does not work. For the TDBU shades, I have set the second motor to “Secondary rail” instead of “Vane Tilt”. Is that correct? I also tried “Vane Tilt”, but that does not seem to make a big difference.