I am trying to setup the Leviosa Zone device in Home Assistant using your custom component. I have already setup the house & zone via the LS app in IOS so it is on my wifi network.
I manually copied the custom component into Home Assistant and rebooted.
When I tried adding the Leviosa integration, I received an error message saying “No unconfigured Leviosa Zone HUBs found”.
I would expect the hub to be configured to at least be on the wifi with a home/zone setup prior to adding it to home assistant.
Any ideas or is there a newer beta of the home assistant driver available?
I realize this thread is nearly 2 years old, but I’m searching for affordable motorized blinds and came across your post. You said your blinds were affordable, but, nearly $500 a window is stupidly overpriced. Before getting to the Leviosa website, I was excited seeing a manufacture pressence in the Home Assistant forums, but you’re insane if you think $500 a window is affordable, especially when you can get them for under $200.
The novelty is the only reason they’re still priced the way they are. It’s not because they cost more to manufacture. You’re replacing a $2 piece of plastic with $10 worth of electronics (and that’s if you use a high quality parts). I wish manufacturers would stop being greedy, and just make a quality product and be happy with a reasonable profit. There is no reason for a 2000% profit on window treatments.
Totally understand if Leviosa rather handle issues via their own tech support and not here in this humble HA forum.
That said, just as a quick follow up, @MwC-Trexx / @ryans - What was your experience with the blinds so far? Is the integration working fine these days? How many different states would the integration support? Is it in %? Or open / close / opening / closing? Are the controls / connections reliable?
I have the 3 blinds up and running in Leviosa/HA (and one more that should arrive today hopefully). While there were some bumps along the way, everything is now working fine.
I would classify the issues I encountered into 2 different categories.
Hub Related (Leviosa Hub)
Documentation Related (lack of and poor nomenclature)
Hub Related
I ran into a couple issues related to Hub.
The first issue was getting it to connect to my IOT vlan on my network. The hub is based on the ESPHome chip platform. I initially ran into issues getting to connect to the WiFi network, which I resolved by disabling both pi-hole and cellular connection on my iPhone. Once I got the Hub on the network I paired the blinds to the hub.
The second more painful issue was related to getting the HA integration to discover the Hub. The integration doesn’t support manually setting up the hub IP address, it only can be discovered automatically. The discovery process is based on using SSDP for discovery. It turns out Ubiquiti has issues with passing SSDP properly between vLANs. My HA Blue device is on my main vLAN, but the hub is on IOT vLAN. I ended up having to run an SSDP helper container on my UDM-Pro box which solved the SSDP discovery issue.
Documentation Issues
There is no documentation that outlined the SSDP issue above at all. In fact I had to go GitHub code hunting for the Integration to determine that SSDP was the mechanism they were using for discovery. There is also no mechanism in the Leviosa iOS app to change the WiFi network/configuration. You have to reset the hub, which clears WiFi configuration as well as any blind pairings.
Another issue relates to the Integration config flow & Leviosa’s naming standard.
Once HA finds the device, there are 2 sets of values you need to provide.
Zone Hub = What you want to name the Leviosa HUB within HA (Dining Room).
Group # Name = the individual shades that you have paired to the Hub.
** You will need to make sure that you keep the order of the blinds consistent with how you added them in the Leviosa App. (i.e. blind 1 = Left blind, 2 = right, 3 = middle) you will need to label them as group 1 name = left blind, etc. **
There is no option on the integration to modify the configuration if you get the blinds out of order. You have to delete and re-create.
The integration will so create an “all blinds” entity that will affect all blinds tied to that specific hub.
As for operation, you have the standard up/down/stop options. I haven’t tried seeing if I could lower them or raise them to a specific % as for my use case wasn’t really required.
Overall they have worked well in actual HA usage (once I worked through all the hurdles). Hopefully this will help others who have them get them setup in an easier fashion.
Oh wow! Thanks a ton for sharing!! This would be very helpful for the discussion here.
= = = = =
Subsequent (and minor) questions: Is the “all blinds” entity the only thing one would get (and control) via the integration? Could you help share maybe a snippet of what the attributes are, under the Developer Tools > States > All Blinds?
Amazing response - demonstrates once again how smart HASS users are and how generous they are with time to help others. MwC-Trexx is correct that discovery is based on SSDP, and Ubiquiti connection was not smooth - Leviosa Shades is always looking for ways to improve!
Leviosa is an affordable option considering the fabric style (1) and smaller size limitations of shades under $200. Plus, you will not likely get any support, as you would from a company like Leviosa that patrols these forums to help users and contribute to the community.
Thanks @Leviosa for the kind words. Daniel (at Leviosa) should have most of my feedback items from the emails we exchanged while I was trying to get the HA integration working.
Feel free to email or DM me if you want to talk more about areas for improvement.
Can the Leviosa solution be implemented without connection to the internet? I’m OK with the hub but I don’t like my devises requiring an internet connection.
The Leviosa Zone requires internet access as it relies on AWS for command processing and features such as ‘state status’. It does not require LAN access - though commands will be processed faster.
Thanks Tony. A bit of a bummer but I’ll just throw it on my IOT LAN. I’m ordering a blind on Monday. Has the SSDP discovery on an Ubiquity network been resolved?
It’s great to see a company supporting open protocols and engaging with the community! I found Leviosa because of this thread. They are at the top of my list for replacing my blinds!
Asking if anyone has actually installed Leviosa motorized shades and if so did you use battery packs or plug in cord? Can you share some photos of the finished install? We are desperately trying to convince ourselves to consider ordering some for specific windows but their website gallery pictures are all but useless.
@Leviosa Also asking if the SSDP Ubiquiti issue has been fixed. I’m still running via the above posted SmartThings integration (Motorized Shade Suggestions - #14 by Markus99). Working, so not a huge deal, but definitely giving me pause to purchase more. Running a UDM Pro w/ two VLANs, HA on one and Leviosa hub on another.
@wpollock Here’s a few pics of the single set of blinds I have installed in our movie room:
Overall they’re pretty quiet, look nice and I liked the ability to be able to customize size / color to exactly fit my needs. We have 5 smaller windows in our master bedroom I’d like to outfit, but would likely require another hub (too far from existing one I’m thinking), so wtg for firmware updates / confirmation before moving forward. Hope this helps.
@markus99,
Thank you for sharing your install picture and opinion of the Leviosa shade you have installed. It looks like you
Installed using the battery pack versus the power cord for operation. Can you tell me how deep your window opening is and how far the valance protrudes into the room? One of our openings will be +/- 110 inches wide and Leviosa is one of only a few manufacturers that offer a single shade for an opening this wide. That and the option to use blackout fabric are appealing since it is a western facing window into our family/tv room.
However, not being able to have a quality picture showing how far into the room the valance will protrude gives us some hesitancy in ordering what will be a somewhat expensive shade with no refund option after purchase.
