Hello - I’m a Home Assistant newbie so I’d like to understand a bit more about why certain third party integrations exist as “built-in” HA integrations and others do not.
I presently have 15 motorized shades in my home that are all Graber brand motors – they also happen to be Z-wave, and I have a SmartThings Z-wave hub, so it was easy to add them to HA as part of the native SmartThings integration.
We need some new blinds for different windows, and I’m trying to decide whether or not I want to stick with the same brand – the motors are CRAZY loud and it sounds like a jet engine is taking off when they all open/close at the same time – or move to a different brand. The blind company we work with only offers Neo-compatible blinds as an alternative.
I noticed that there is no native integration for Neo Smart blinds – just a custom component – and I’m wondering why that is (and, in general, what constitutes a product that is worthy of a “supported” integration versus one that requires a more manual approach. Is it just based on demand? Should I be scared off of this brand of blinds because there isn’t a sufficiently large population of users of it? I noticed that in a recent (Fall of '21) HA update, everyone’s Neo Smart blinds integration just broke, and I worry that’s the kind of thing that I’ll have to deal with over the lifetime of these blinds.
Anyway - just curious if there’s a rhyme or reason as to what is available as a native integration. Thanks!
I’m in the same boat, so I’m curious to hear more about your situation. I too want Home Assistant support and the first salesman coming is for Graber brand blinds. Now I’m sad to hear they’re so loud. If anyone else has recommendations of blinds brands with better HA integration, I’m interested.
I know it doesn’t answer your question on the integration, but Somfy (Graber / Springs Window Fashions / Bali) had an upgrade to the actual motor last year. My newest blinds (3 purchased last summer) are an ORDER of MAGNITUDE QUIETER than the ones I purchased before. Same blind. New awesome motor.
the same guy who installed my Graber blinds less than a year ago claims that the new motor is much quieter (maybe it’s all the same tech in the Somfy that you’re referring to). The fact is I’m only adding a few more blinds – it already sounds like a plane taking off, adding a few really quiet blinds isn’t going to help at all
I know I shouldn’t care about this, but I’m dreading the inevitable sale of this house and having to explain to a buyer that “for these windows you use this remote, for these you use your phone, and for these you have to use your voice, assuming you have a smart speaker” – having a physical remote that is consistent across the house seems like a safer bet, and given the lack of HA integration with Neo, I think I’m just going to go Graber.
Unless the device uses a standard, eg zwave or zigbee, someone has to have a device, reverse engineer some sort of protocol, and spend time developing.
Also home assistant has strict coding standards. A custom component may work, but it is not up to that standard.
On one of the threads I saw from 2017 (or maybe it was 2019) some engineer on the Neo SWE team volunteered to work with HA to write to their API/protocol (that offer, at least in that thread, went unanswered). I don’t think this requires reverse engineering.
