I got my Somfy RTS roller blinds today and I was wondering something (my Homey isn’t hooked up yet): If I use Homey to set a state of the blinds (like say, go down halfway) and then (for whatever reason) use the supplied remote to change that state (like say, go up all the way), wouldn’t that confuse Homey as there is no way for Homey to know that the state has changed (since RTS solely transmists unidirectionally).
Or am I missing some functionality here where Homey can know, somehow?
Homey does not get confused, because it has no information about a changed position. So when Homey sends a “open” command, and the roller blinds appears to be opened already, nothing happens. The Somfy blinds should be calibrated → it won’t open wider than it’s defined limits
Homey can only send open/close commands, so you can’t control how far it will go, just all the way. One exception is the My position that’s preprogrammed into the blinds, but Homey won’t remember you used that or anything else. It’s basically as dumb as the remote 
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So I can’t make it go and then after a certain time tell it to stop and hold (say I use a timer to halt its “go” command after 10 seconds or so).
Also, the somfy rts app commands I find in the documentation mention actions based on state and state changes. If you say that it Homey won’t remeber that, why is this functionality mentioned?
The action cards are only triggered when you use the buttons within Homey, so if you manually open/close the blind from the Homey UI, then the Flows can execute other actions.
You could use a timer, but the position will only be approximate and you have no way of knowing where it’s starting from. For manually starting and stopping, that’s not so much of a problem, but you will find there’s a lag between pressing a button and the blind response.
I’m not dissing RTS here, just being realistic, as all my blinds and curtains are RTS and I have learned to live with the limits for many years.
I understand.
I actually wasn’t sure Whether to go for RTS or not (because of the limitations) but opted to do so anyway because 1. There is an official app for it in Homey (which there isn’t for other blinds really and I wanted to be as sure as I could be it would integrate) and 2. I wanted a wired motor where most “modern” blinds with Thread are battery powered and relatively unproven.
Also, Somfy is a big name in the industry.
There’s also the IO system. Connected via a Tahoma switch, it can be more precise within Homey. That’s why I ordered my new sun-screen using this system. It obviously is more expensive.
All my Somfy devices are battery powered, but the batteries last for an incredibly long time. All three blinds have solar panels and I have only had to replace two sets of AA rechargeable batteries in the 8 or so years that I have had them. My two pairs of curtains need recharging about once a year.
So, Somfy products are great, but I do occasionally wish they had feedback of their positions. Most of the time, they open when it gets light and close when it gets dark and I forget they are even there.
I assume yours are outside units?
Mine are indoor ones. I didn’t know somfy motors could have solar panels, interesting. However, not usefull for my specific use case I presume (because of their indoor nature).
I wasn’t aware these motors could last this long on battery power (I might have looked to motionblinds after all if I knew that, nevertheless, now I won’t ever have to think about them). However, my specific blinds are quite large (around 2.5 meters in lenght), of which I have 2 which may affect battery longevity?
Fortunately, my use case will mainly be open when it is light and close when it is dark (or when I want to watch a movie with Philips hue effects, which I also have). So mid positions are a bit of a niche, I admit (but still nice to have).
I wanted to avoid IO because:
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it requires a seperate hub and I didn’t want a miriad of hubs in my home (That and the fact the overlapping functionality of a Tahoma box with Homey seemed too redundant to spend any money on)
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It is being phased out as the frequency it works on is apparently restricted in the USA (for official government communication) and as such cannot be used in that market, hence the switch to Zigbee started at Somfy. If that story is true than IO has no real future as a protocol in the long term.
No, all indoor blinds and about 2m wide. One is a heavy wooden slat venetian blind, another is a roman blind and the other is a roller blind. The solar panels are about 200mm long and 80mm wide and just stick to the window behind the blinds. They are all on different sides of the house as well, so only one faces the sun. But that’s the benefit of not transmitting data, as that’s what eats the batteries. I also have a SwitchBot roller blind with a solar panel, facing the sun, but that still needs plugging in about once every three weeks, probably because it has two way communication.
Ah yes, that does indeed make sense.
Mine are all simple roller blinds by the way.
I considered Venetian blinds, though I decided they were perhaps a bit impracticle for my use case.
Maybe slightly off-topic, but did anyone manage to get the Somfy curtain rail operating via Homey (without the Somfy RTS hub) and if yes, how?
Also slightly off (my own) topic: I suppose I can pair more than one blind that are all connected to the same remote?
I presume this would probably as simple as selecting the correct channel on the remote and then pressing the pairing button on the back of the remote and then repeating that for every channel until they are all paired?
Is that assumption correct?
You need to install the Somfy RTS app on Homey and hope that Homey can reach the curtain rail.
As far as I can remember that’s correct, but it has been many years since I used the remote and I’m not even sure where they are now.
Thanks for the reply!
Additional question, and also (slightly more) off topic: Is there an app, tool or method that allows for homey to receive 433mhz signals and start flows based on receiving that signal?
Not to my knowledge.
But,
with additional tools like this,
you can translate 433MHz signals to MQTT, which can be processed by Homey using the MQTT Client + MQTT Broker apps.
If you want to blow your mind then you can use the Athom developer tools to record a signal and then other third-party software to analyse it and eventually create an app to listen for them. But, be prepared to invest a lot of time on it. Basically, different controls will employ either Frequency Modulation or Amplitude Modulation to add their data to the base frequency and that will be a series of 1’s and 0’s that encode the commands, etc, so that all needs to be worked out. Then it needs to be translated into Homeys way of working so that the received signal can be decoded by the app. If you are talking about RTS, there is also a small issue that it is on a slightly different frequency to the one that Homey listens on (it’s been too long for me to remember the exact frequencies). When Homey sends an RTS signal it first changes the frequency, then sends the data, before putting it back to it’s default. It was great for the old LightWave RF devices as it listened on the same frequency as those, so their dimmers and switch worked with Homey.
So, to sum-up, you need a specific app for each device, and if that is not in the store then you need to be a good engineer to make your own.
