I ran across the Select Blinds website the other day selling motorized cellular blinds. They have an internal battery and are charged via USB charger. I ordered two with the intent on figuring out how to automate them.
The blinds come with a wand that attached to the head unit via micro-USB plug (see image). Thanks for the helpful labels, I was able to verify that the connection was not USB, but a proprietary pinout. Unlike regular USB, this VDD is actualy 8v - which seems to be the voltage of the battery. Turns out at the bottom of the wand where you normally plug in the USB cord to charge is a charging circuit that steps up the voltage to that 8V. The UP/SET/DOWN signals temporarily connect the signal to ground to signal to the motor which way to operate (set = program the top and bottom limits). Thus, automating this was as easy as connecting a Particle Photon to the UP, DOWN and GND pins and use MQTT cover/blind in HA.
With the current sale going on, these may be the cheapest way to get professional looking blinds connected to HA. Way cheaper than my previous attempt at buying Somfy motors and creating my own roller shades. Probably on par with IKEA roller shades, but without the flakey programming/association issues they have.
No. Today status is assumed to be 100% or 0%, depending on “up” or “down” command issued to the photon (or other wifi adapter). Most blinds have a “stop” button. For that I just have the photon report 50% to HA when the stop button is pressed. Said another way, there are no sensors to detect the blind position. When the photon powers up, it issues an open command to all attached devices to get things to a known state. I don’t currently have a way to detect if the user pressed a button on the local wand.
Thanks for posting this - this is the only post I can find that is talking about doing what I’m hoping to do - hack into some of these select blinds motorized shades to connect them to HA.
Out of curiosity - what were the blinds that you ordered?
Also, which type of motorization did you get? It looks like there’s a couple of options:
I’m hoping to purchase a bunch of blinds and it doesn’t look like it’d be too difficult to connect this up to an ESP or something to connect to HA.
I ended up getting the ones from select blinds with the motorized wand. From there I disconnected the tiny wire harness that normally connects to the wand and connected up a relay and esp8266 to the up and down wires on the wire harness to control them. There is still a USB cable that has to run to it to power the esp, but I got a flat white USB cable that blends in well with the window sill. Occasionally I have to connect up the original wand to the small two wire harness to charge the blinds battery, but otherwise I leave the wand off.
They’ve been automated to come up in the morning and go down at sunset for probably 2-3 years now and have been rock solid.
