Philips Sensor > Luxaflex (lower with 10 cm if Lux = 10.000) possible?

My idea is to let the sunscreen respond to the Philips motion/light sensor which is in the living room at a 30 cm distance from the sunscreen/window. Each time the sensor is hit with direct light, the screen lowers itself. This way the sun wont shine directly inside the living room. I am fairly technical but no programmer so I think a guide will work.

Great if Rogier can help! (I have not had time to make an example yet)

I think you are right @rogierhofboer, the posibility to control the Luxaflex using a variable would be great!

First you will need a PowerView Hub (v1 or v2) for that. PowerView uses a custom protocol on 2.4Ghz, but it’s not compatible with Wifi or Bluetooth, so its not something Homey can learn.

Then after adding the shade to the hub, create 2 scenes in the smartphone iOS / Android PowerView App for the shade (product). One all up and one in a lowered position you want it get to as the sun hits the sensor.

Then on the Homey install and setup the Homey PowerView app, and create two flows where you trigger the scenes. I don’t have the Philips sensor myself, so I can’t give an exact example.
But is something like this:
Flow 1:
When Light intensity has changed
And Logica Value is greater than: Light intensity value > [pick your value]
Then PowerView: Acivate Scene [Shade to half closed]

Flow 2:
When Light intensity has changed
And Logica Value is less than: Light intensity value < [ pick your value]
Then: PowerView: Activate scene [shade open]

You need to play with the values and closing and opening don’t need to be the same.
So above value “30” is closes, but only opens again if the value drops below “20”
Ofcourse you can add other cards to include for example the time of day.

BTW I’ve created a virtual device which makes it possible to dim a luxaflex powerview shade (0 is fully closed, 100% is fully open) and control it up / down / stop buttons (and I could add tilting the venetian blinds). It takes some time to create a guide on how to set this up, but let me know (or anyone else) is interested.

If some of you are really interested and don’t want to wait if and when I am going to update the app… Let me know, I’ll put together a how-to, tonight ;)`
But I don’t think this functionality is needed for the OP.

Here’s how I use my hue sensor to switch on the lights.

  1. be aware of the position of your hue sensor. If the light on the sensor is influences by the position of the shades you might have shades going up and down a lot
  2. I build in an offset for the lights to go off to prevent that (see below)
  3. you could also cosider to build in a timeout period after moving the shades) ( clouds in front of the sun)

My flow to switch the lights on.
I set a better logic veriable “keuken is donker” that is compared to the measured value:
image

And to switch the lights off
Using the same variable but with a +4 offset
image

Be aware!! You will be checking for bright light, I am checking for getting dark, so use smaller then iso greater than (I used)

Thanks! Yes the offset is what I meant the values for open / close (on off) don’t need to be the same. I forgot to explain the reason why you might want that… :blush:

Also no sure if OP (michiel) is on Homey 1.5 or 2.x
I took leap of faith and am on 2.x now. But what I am doing should work on 1.5, I think even better because using tags combined with other data as value is a pain in the ass on 2.x you cannot edit the field freely only delete / add on the end and the edit field is way to small (try putting in some longer json string for example…)

Thanks for the explanation, it is not exactly what i am trying to built. I think i need to make multiple powerview scènes, for every 10 cm a different scène. Then i need to tell homey to close the sunscreen with 10 cm each time the sensor is hit with direct sunlight (>10.000 lux). This way the sensor (and living room) is always in the shade. If my explanation is not clearly enough, I can draw the situation.

@michielvzz It is not clear to me what you want to accomplish or maybe better put, why you would want it to work this way. Please also see my PM.

OK I did indeed not read it that way.
There are multiple ways you can do this. You need to pick what you like best, heres one:
1st create a better logic value “direct sun” that is assigned with the value 10.0000 (you can easily change this value while finetuning your lux setting later)
2nd you need to create a better logic value “shade scene” to keep track of the position of you shades (starts with zero)

I would create multiple “powerviewscene” flows:
“Powerview scene 1”
WHEN “this flow is started”
AND “shade scene” = 1
THEN set to powerview scene 1
“Powerview scene 2”
Copy the flow above anf fill with 2
“Powerview scene 3” etc

Create one trigger flow with you hue (like my screenshots)
WHEN brightness has changed
AND “direct sun” is smaller then
THEN
Betterlogic mathjs set value {shade scene = shade scene +1}
start this flow “powerview scene 1”
Start this flow “powerview Scene 2”
…so just add all your flows
You might need to put a 1sec delay on the “start this flow” just to make sure the value is set 1st (homey kicks off all the actions in THEN at the same time…)

So a direct sunlight will trigger all the flows, the value in the AND determines which of the flows will actually get to the THEN

And a last flow “shades up” that set the “shade scene” variable back to zero

Enjoy the building!

I’ve created a tutorial on how to control PowerView shades directly via the hub API.
https://community.homey.app/t/tutorial-control-luxaflex-powerview-shades-using-the-hub-api/

So you can set the position directly, without the need to create a bunch of scenes.

If I understand correctly you want to lower the shade with another 10 cm every time the sensor is hit with more than 10.000 lux.

While I still don’t get why this would “work” for you (please explain, I am genuinely interested and curious), it is possible now by decreasing the shade position with a certain fixed amount every time you measure > 10.000 lux .

So it starts at the top (position1 = 65535) and moves down with a bit further every time enough light is detected, until the shade is fully closed (position1 = 0).

Be sure to include an “and” to check if decreasing will not make position1 less than 0.

Let me know if you need any help after this with setting up your flows.

I hope this will be available in an update without all these steps. That would be great!

Did not read the tutorial (as I do not have these luxaflex)
But it does make the flow much simpler:
Instead of shade scene create a value shade position and set it to top 65535

Create one trigger flow with you hue (like my screenshots)
WHEN brightness has changed
AND “direct sun” is smaller then
THEN
Betterlogic mathjs set value {shade position = shade position -10}
(No clue if 10 is OK)
And in the same then (with a 1ssec delay to make sure the value is set) sent this new value to the luxaflex

PS When building the flow make sure to add papertrails (or another app) to make debugging easier

Thanks Rogier, i completed some of the steps in the tutorial but can’t figure out to make the flows. I think this is just too far out of my league for now and it would take you too much time for me to understand what i’m doing using Skype. I chose to buy Homey instead of working with HASS or Domoticz because of my lack of programming knowledge. So i’m really hoping for an in-app possibilty in the future to make this work.

You’ve asked me why I want this to work the way I want it to work. It’s because the position of my garden is S/SE. In the afternoon, the sun goes down which results in more light entering the room. I could close the Luxaflex fully with the first ray of direct light but that would take away the view on the garden form inside the living room. Therefore I would like to lower the luxaflex with the same pace the sun is going down.

I am thinking about extended the app, but I need to take some time do it with also many others things pending…

I also don’t want to create 2 apps for the exact same product (and I don’t think Athom will even allow it), so the changes also will need to be reviewed and merged by HUSS (the company that created Homey the app for Luxaflex). This all can take some serious time.

So in the mean time the offer stands to guide you via Skype :slight_smile: Just let me know via a PM, I’ll be glad to help out.

Hi - just join this forum. I have the LuxaFlex PowerView top/down Duette curtains based on the PowerView Hub 2.0. I have seen that there is a PowerView App for Homey to control the curtains but not sure what is excatly in this app… What I want to be able to make is a flow that will control my curtains base on sun intensity sensor(s) (e.g. from Hue or Fibaro sensor) e.g. curtains down x% when the light intensity (LUX) is above 10.000 lux for more that y minutes and curtains up when the light intensity is below x-z lux for aa minutes. Reason: to protect the furniture from UV and keep the house cool. If possible I also need the function to control the top down function of the curtains to set winter scenes. Reason: in the winter time our garden is quite open and want to prohibit people to look in while still having natural light into the house. And in the summer to protect our wooden floors where we do not have the expensive leather furniture :wink: (PS: I do not yet have the Homey setup - as I’m looking for a smart home system that can support the above :-)) Cheers, Steen

Hi Steen, this is possible, but not (yet) via the app. The app can only trigger predefined scenes (which might be good enough).

Please see my extensive tutorial if you want to be able to directly control the blinds right now.

Tutorial:

https://community.homey.app/t/tutorial-control-luxaflex-powerview-shades-using-the-hub-api/12156

Hi Rogierhofboer
Thanks for your feedback :slight_smile:
I have already taken a look at your fine and detailed tutorial - very high quality (but little difficult to understand/read the screen shots due to language… ;-)). I think however this is a bit above my level and think I’ll await a bit and see if a module/app etc will not show up for this light intensity control of powerview curtains - quit a number of people must have this issue or want this feature. So guess is will come soon somewhere - Somphy already have put the sun sensor as par of their smart home solution to control automated curtains. Cheers, Steen

Hi Steen,

As far as I know there is no official update of the app planned. But I will be happy to guide you through the setup via Skype (or any other video-chat-service you prefer). Just let me know. Best regards, Rogier

Hi Rogierhofboer

Thanks for this extremely good support :smiley:

I have decided to return all my stuff bought for trying to get the curtains controlled by light intensity and just use what is direct available in the PowerView / HomeKit integration (Scenes and Time of day). If something (simple) shows up to control the curtains from LuxaFlex (HunterDouglas) PowerView I’ll for sure be interested.

If I regret - I’ll return to you :wink:

Cheers, Steen

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