Electric Roller Blinds

Hardware
1

Hi all, looking for some advice on a good solution for automating a set of electric blinds during a house renovation.
My requirements;

  • Mains power (rechargeable batteries are not spouse friendly)
  • Local push (can’t rely on internet/cloud services)
  • State aware (HA needs to know the blind position)
  • Reliable
  • WiFi connectivity preferred (would consider Zigbee or RF433 in the right circumstances)
  • Affordable
  • Secure (prefer to use open source software such as tasmota)
  • All in one or plug/play but not a total DIY (somewhat time poor at the moment)

I have been looking at pairing a Zemismart Electric Roller Curtain Motor with an Ahtom Tasmota Curtain Module for <$70 per blind.

This seems to be a good option in that it is local, wifi and using tasmota so ticks a lot of boxes. I can even control it via the tasmota web interface if HA is offline or via a physical switch that can sit behind the pelmet as a backup if the wifi goes down.

I just haven’t played with this sort of gear before so I don’t know if the Ahtom/HA will be able to know the blind position. I’m not sure how accurately it can control the blind? Will it alway return to the same up/down position?

So I throw it out to the community. What do people think, good idea or are there better options?

2

Did you get anywhere with this? My requirements are practically the same, so I am interested in what you found?

3

Getting there… Home renovations take time.
I’ve been playing with it a bit more and I’ve landed on using the Shelly Plus 2PM as the driver and the Zemismart motor.
Here is OZ we have pretty strict laws on what can be wired to the mains power so my electrician wanted to make sure we would pass inspection.
This added about $15 per blind but otherwise isn’t an issue.
Also the benefit is that I probably won’t need to flash them with Tasmota, I can just use MQTT to connect to home assistant. That way when I sell up, I can just leave everything the way it is and the new owner just needs to download the shelly app to control them rather than get into the world of home assistant.

As for the actual wiring, I have all the blinds wired back with 4 core cable back to behind a single switch on the wall. Then tucked in behind the switch are the shelly units. They all connect to a single 3 way momentary button for up/down.

I can see why “normal” people just buy Ikea. This is not something that my builder or electrician have seen done before and isn’t for the faint of heart but the final solution should be pretty sweet and has high wife approval factor. :slight_smile: